Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs(vox.com)
vox.com
Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23688627/meta-layoffs-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-instagram-whatsapp
351 comments
> In my view, you're either a hustler, a hacker, or a manager of such to be essential to a tech business. You don't need any strategic hiring coordinating coordinators for higher-education.
I think it’s somewhat telling that you didn’t list “engineer” here.
Meta isn’t a quirky startup, and hasn’t been for a decade: it’s one of the largest corporations (by market value) on the planet. By all rights, there ought to be a lot of people performing boring, turn-the-crank work that doesn’t immediately surface to you.
I think it’s somewhat telling that you didn’t list “engineer” here.
Meta isn’t a quirky startup, and hasn’t been for a decade: it’s one of the largest corporations (by market value) on the planet. By all rights, there ought to be a lot of people performing boring, turn-the-crank work that doesn’t immediately surface to you.
A hacker is an engineer.
A hacker is a kind of engineer. Large companies require all sorts; expecting all of your engineers to be “hackers” is the kind of prima-donna-mentality-encouraging behavior that I would expect Meta to have grown out of by now.
To that point: there is a lot of boring, eye-rolling -- but totally essential -- things like requirements management that are important for engineering. "move fast and break things" makes sense when you're small and agile, but when you have a massive platform that many other individuals and business depend on you just can't do that.
Sometimes I need a wizard with multi-domain knowledge to whip up a POC system, but most of the time I need someone to ensure all of the pieces work, have specs that meet reqs, and won't cause an outage when we deploy them.
Sometimes I need a wizard with multi-domain knowledge to whip up a POC system, but most of the time I need someone to ensure all of the pieces work, have specs that meet reqs, and won't cause an outage when we deploy them.
> A hacker is a kind of engineer.
I've always found the term "hacker" pretty eye-rolly.
I've always found the term "hacker" pretty eye-rolly.
I think they _should_ have outgrown it by now, but I'm not sure whether I'd honestly expect it
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Admittedly they seem to be overlapping circles; but I don't believe they actually are.
Only if they have a degree allowing themselves to call that.
Software engineer isn't a protected title in the US.
My cat can legally be a software engineer - no degrees required.
My cat can legally be a software engineer - no degrees required.
Exactly. A subset of engineers who deliver much and fast.
haven't read the hacker manifesto yet?
Snide putdowns of other groups of people just convince me your opinions are not worth listening to.
Much, fast, maintainable: pick two.
Also at Meta. The software stack is a shit show - xplat debugging in Vscode can’t even print the variables properly. This hacker culture is good at shipping shitty stuff and getting your bonus/promo and moving on.
Isn't a lot of this silliness due to them feeling like they needed to "poach" talented developers, so that the competion wouldn't get them?
That, of course, is absurd on the surface. Hiring people for the sake of hiring ... so they can stand around the watercooler discussing the weather.
That led to double or triple the headcount! 85,000+ employees to work on Instagram, Facebook, and pet projects.
That number alone boggles my mind. I work with three other senior developers and we run an entire phone company with five-nines uptime. Yes, three.
And now suddenly everyone is shocked about layoffs!
That, of course, is absurd on the surface. Hiring people for the sake of hiring ... so they can stand around the watercooler discussing the weather.
That led to double or triple the headcount! 85,000+ employees to work on Instagram, Facebook, and pet projects.
That number alone boggles my mind. I work with three other senior developers and we run an entire phone company with five-nines uptime. Yes, three.
And now suddenly everyone is shocked about layoffs!
4 engineers for an entire phone company sounds scary. I’m sure your engineering is robust enough such that outages are minimal, but that still sounds like a lot of on call (rotation of 4 = once a month?). Even if you only get paged once every few months, you still need to worry about getting paged until your shift is over! Even if you don’t worry in the psychological sense, you still have to schedule around it.
I actually screwed that up, we only have 3 total software engineers. Including myself.
We do have other employees who maintain the hardware, on-call DBAs to manage issues, etc. I'm only speaking to the software engineers.
And we have lots of hardware and lots of open-source solutions that handle the actual calls.
I'm full-stack but lead on the front-end, a complex Angular application to manage everything from huge call centers to small restaurants.
We have C# for APIs, cloud Oracle for the database, and a whole slew of other software and services to manage the actual calls.
Each of us is specialized in specific parts. Our up-time is tremendous given the amount of code we've written. It's extremely stable.
I've been at this 20+ years, as have the other 2. We know enough between us to get this done.
I've never been called after normal work hours. We release the updated front-end every week and haven't had any issues. And a lot of changes/improvements go into that ... that's a lot of my job.
It's well-architectured, well-tested, fault-tolerant software.
We do have other employees who maintain the hardware, on-call DBAs to manage issues, etc. I'm only speaking to the software engineers.
And we have lots of hardware and lots of open-source solutions that handle the actual calls.
I'm full-stack but lead on the front-end, a complex Angular application to manage everything from huge call centers to small restaurants.
We have C# for APIs, cloud Oracle for the database, and a whole slew of other software and services to manage the actual calls.
Each of us is specialized in specific parts. Our up-time is tremendous given the amount of code we've written. It's extremely stable.
I've been at this 20+ years, as have the other 2. We know enough between us to get this done.
I've never been called after normal work hours. We release the updated front-end every week and haven't had any issues. And a lot of changes/improvements go into that ... that's a lot of my job.
It's well-architectured, well-tested, fault-tolerant software.
Sorry, but I'm skeptical that you actually run "an entire phone company" in the way that most people understand the term. You mention that you use lots of open-source solutions, and I'm guessing you outsource the build and operation of the network to a real phone company, probably similar to an MVNO. Am I wrong?
Meta is very different from that, they build the products that users interact with, but also build things at the bottom of the tech stack. At their scale, this makes business sense to do so, and comparing your headcount with theirs makes no sense.
I don't really understand why software engineers keep dunking on each other like this. I get that people want to broadcast how smart they are, but in reality we're just giving the general public a warped sense of how much work is actually involved in building large-scale software systems.
Meta is very different from that, they build the products that users interact with, but also build things at the bottom of the tech stack. At their scale, this makes business sense to do so, and comparing your headcount with theirs makes no sense.
I don't really understand why software engineers keep dunking on each other like this. I get that people want to broadcast how smart they are, but in reality we're just giving the general public a warped sense of how much work is actually involved in building large-scale software systems.
I’m also skeptical any time someone mentions 5 nines uptime at a small scale. For one, it takes a lot of engineering to be able to actually monitor and detect that with precision (that is, how do you know you are 99.999 and not 99.995?) and with so few people there may be holes in what’s monitored (there are so many places you can drop requests/whatever and lose availability). There’s also tail risks like datacenter incidents (if your servers are on three racks in two data centers) or dependencies like power outages that you may be getting lucky on avoiding due to small scale, rather than amortizing over a huge fleet - that is to say, if there is a 1% risk per year that one of your racks goes down and takes you 3 9s when that happens, you are really at slightly under 4 9s, but with only a few racks it doesn’t happen most years.
That last one is I suspect what makes it so small scale operators can achieve “5 9s” with a fraction of the engineering of larger operators. You can get a lot of 9s most years because you dodge infrequent risks.
That last one is I suspect what makes it so small scale operators can achieve “5 9s” with a fraction of the engineering of larger operators. You can get a lot of 9s most years because you dodge infrequent risks.
> I’m also skeptical any time someone mentions 5 nines uptime at a small scale. For one, it takes a lot of engineering to be able to actually monitor and detect that with precision (that is, how do you know you are 99.999 and not 99.995?)
We have that in place. We run phone systems that businesses depend on, and we have SLAs that guarantee this uptime in order to secure customers. We have network engineers dedicated to everything from guaranteeing it on the cloud side to checking Wireshark traces for any hint of abnormalities, every day. When I say 3 people, I mean those of us writing the front-end, back-end, database procs, and code that the open-source libraries require, including forking and custom patches. We have other team members ensuring our HA pairs, load balancing, redundancy, fail-overs, and all the other associated technology is working as expected.
I won't get into the details, but we have not violated our SLAs, ever.
And you'd be surprised at what open-source software we are using to drive parts of this system. Kudos to them, they are helping us maintain this with some rock-solid software.
We have that in place. We run phone systems that businesses depend on, and we have SLAs that guarantee this uptime in order to secure customers. We have network engineers dedicated to everything from guaranteeing it on the cloud side to checking Wireshark traces for any hint of abnormalities, every day. When I say 3 people, I mean those of us writing the front-end, back-end, database procs, and code that the open-source libraries require, including forking and custom patches. We have other team members ensuring our HA pairs, load balancing, redundancy, fail-overs, and all the other associated technology is working as expected.
I won't get into the details, but we have not violated our SLAs, ever.
And you'd be surprised at what open-source software we are using to drive parts of this system. Kudos to them, they are helping us maintain this with some rock-solid software.
I think you cannot really salvage this argument. The way you describe it makes it sound to me that your company's success is ore likely due to luck and not just competence. It's also not clear if you really think this is a model that can scale to the size of Meta or if you just wanted to slide in a humblebrag.
> It's also not clear if you really think this is a model that can scale to the size of Meta or if you just wanted to slide in a humblebrag.
It can't. It depends on "software services" hosted and coded by "other software companies" so his infra's SLA is basically outsourced to either Amazon, Microsoft or Oracle.
It can't. It depends on "software services" hosted and coded by "other software companies" so his infra's SLA is basically outsourced to either Amazon, Microsoft or Oracle.
> It depends on "software services" hosted and coded by "other software companies" so his infra's SLA is basically outsourced to either Amazon, Microsoft or Oracle.
It also depends on an incredible amount of in-house custom code.
If I deploy a change that breaks our Angular front-end, or a C# API change that has a typo that routes calls to the wrong places, or a configuration file for our open-source software that handles the phone systems, how exactly do we tell our thousands of customers they can't run their call centers? Or our restaurant customers can't take orders because their phone systems are dead?
Let's not be ridiculous. I'm not humble-bragging. I'm telling you what I do at my job.
It also depends on an incredible amount of in-house custom code.
If I deploy a change that breaks our Angular front-end, or a C# API change that has a typo that routes calls to the wrong places, or a configuration file for our open-source software that handles the phone systems, how exactly do we tell our thousands of customers they can't run their call centers? Or our restaurant customers can't take orders because their phone systems are dead?
Let's not be ridiculous. I'm not humble-bragging. I'm telling you what I do at my job.
Arent most peoples at this point?
> I don't really understand why software engineers keep dunking on each other like this.
I'm not dunking on anyone, I'm explaining my day-to-day job with a very small number of senior engineers.
We run a highly complex system. There's no way we could handle millions of calls with five-nines otherwise.
I won't get further into the details because I don't want to reveal too much PII.
I fully understand how much "behind the scenes" work goes on at a place like Facebook. I'm not sitting here imagining rooms of graphic designers thinking what the CSS button radius should be (although I'm sure with 85,000 employees, those happen also).
But note that Musk walked into Twitter, fired en-masse, and it still seems the same to me.
Yes, there are senior engineers who keep the core functionality working.
That is still far less than 85,000 employees.
In our case, it's 3 of us handling all software development. And we write a lot of mission critical code.
I'm not dunking on anyone, I'm explaining my day-to-day job with a very small number of senior engineers.
We run a highly complex system. There's no way we could handle millions of calls with five-nines otherwise.
I won't get further into the details because I don't want to reveal too much PII.
I fully understand how much "behind the scenes" work goes on at a place like Facebook. I'm not sitting here imagining rooms of graphic designers thinking what the CSS button radius should be (although I'm sure with 85,000 employees, those happen also).
But note that Musk walked into Twitter, fired en-masse, and it still seems the same to me.
Yes, there are senior engineers who keep the core functionality working.
That is still far less than 85,000 employees.
In our case, it's 3 of us handling all software development. And we write a lot of mission critical code.
> I've been at this 20+ years, as have the other 2
> We release the updated front-end every week and haven't had any issues. And a lot of changes/improvements go into it
In 20 years zero issues? I don’t believe you.
> We release the updated front-end every week and haven't had any issues. And a lot of changes/improvements go into it
In 20 years zero issues? I don’t believe you.
> Even if you only get paged once every few months, you still need to worry about getting paged until your shift is over!
I'm not sure what you mean. A page every few months will be considered world-class achievement in a FAANG-like company. Take Amazon for instance, the oncall is brutal and getting several pagers per day is normal. Other companies may be better, but not one pager per few months better.
I'm not sure what you mean. A page every few months will be considered world-class achievement in a FAANG-like company. Take Amazon for instance, the oncall is brutal and getting several pagers per day is normal. Other companies may be better, but not one pager per few months better.
When you're on-call, you need to be prepared for a page. That means you can't get drunk with your friends, or get on a plane, etc. Being on-call means being ready to answer a page, whether it comes or not.
> A page every few months will be considered world-class achievement in a FAANG-like company.
Except maybe it's a different beast entirely. At amazon, they're constantly pushing new features at most teams. A stable phone company may just be handling pages for when hardware fails. Presumably there's bugs in fast-moving new code more frequently than hardware failure of a tiny org.
Also, fwiw I've been at amazon and had on-call rotations where we didn't get paged monthly. Your manager/team isn't allowing you to allocate resources to fixing your alarms or bugs if you're getting paged that often and not a crazy critical service.
> A page every few months will be considered world-class achievement in a FAANG-like company.
Except maybe it's a different beast entirely. At amazon, they're constantly pushing new features at most teams. A stable phone company may just be handling pages for when hardware fails. Presumably there's bugs in fast-moving new code more frequently than hardware failure of a tiny org.
Also, fwiw I've been at amazon and had on-call rotations where we didn't get paged monthly. Your manager/team isn't allowing you to allocate resources to fixing your alarms or bugs if you're getting paged that often and not a crazy critical service.
I think all those big corps do a lot of change for the sake of change.
That's why we have so much churn in frameworks, etc.
If you're not "innovating" somewhere, you're not good enough to work there.
Traditional companies are more long term and stable with their tooling and decision making.
That's why we have so much churn in frameworks, etc.
If you're not "innovating" somewhere, you're not good enough to work there.
Traditional companies are more long term and stable with their tooling and decision making.
You started with an absurd conspiracy theory and just ran with it.
> Isn't a lot of this silliness due to them feeling like they needed to "poach" talented developers, so that the competion wouldn't get them?
No! No one does this!
> Isn't a lot of this silliness due to them feeling like they needed to "poach" talented developers, so that the competion wouldn't get them?
No! No one does this!
Oh, come on. Yes they do.
> Is Apple throwing enough money at key engineers to prevent defection to Meta?
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2021/12/29/apple-meta-poaching...
> Is Apple throwing enough money at key engineers to prevent defection to Meta?
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2021/12/29/apple-meta-poaching...
Paying enough to keep key engineers is not the same as hiring new ones they don't need
I love how people assume that a poorly written and tangentially related article, with a question mark in the title nonetheless, becomes the official proof of <wild speculation that bigcorp is doing X>.
Wait until we see the flood of ChatGPT-generated articles. Oh, wait...
Wait until we see the flood of ChatGPT-generated articles. Oh, wait...
Are you not familiar with the world-class investigative tech journalism coming out of iDownloadBlog.com? I mean the guy lying about his day job posted it so clearly it's a very legitimate and prestigious publication.
Supposedly, there is software that uses "internet-based signals" behavioral predictions to identify which key technical people are being courted and/or are considering moving to a new gig.
Poaching is a big part of the game. You can't get a raise compared to what you can playing the game.
Poaching is a big part of the game. You can't get a raise compared to what you can playing the game.
“Hey this guy just updated his linked-in for the first time in two years!”
> Isn't a lot of this silliness due to them feeling like they needed to "poach" talented developers, so that the competion wouldn't get them
People say this from time to time, but have we ever got evidence from any company? A director or VP gave such mandates, a leaked email that discussed such strategy?
People say this from time to time, but have we ever got evidence from any company? A director or VP gave such mandates, a leaked email that discussed such strategy?
No one ever seems to explain how the companies are coordinating to suck up talent. Otherwise, there would be a free rider problem. Why not let Google suck it up instead?
With three people there are limits with what you can build and how fast you can build it. At large tech companies there is a gigantic amount of scope. People will make up scope to justify their job, or to justify why they need to grow their teams to accomplish goals. If a company wants to invest into doing everything over prioriting what should be worked on then headcount will explode.
Perhaps one way to view hiring (at the scale of big tech) is a bit like a VC, you hire 100 people knowing 99 of them won't do anything special, but that 1/100 will make it worth it.
And like VCs the math makes more sense when money is cheap and there's a bull market.
And like VCs the math makes more sense when money is cheap and there's a bull market.
An SAP consultant once told me that they had a term that can roughly translate to "make a crowd" (sorry, no idea about the actual phrase used by consultants in English speaking countries, if there is one). It basically means that whenever a big customer have an issue, they send more people than actually needed, and one senior consultant works on solving the problem while others just walk around and look busy. It gives the impression that they are taking the issue seriously.
'Tis true with Incident Mgmt and some highly sensitive projects, too. Nothing SAP related at all, but gives the appearance to PMs and Ops leaderships that we're going extra hard on the issue.
And to be fair, it's useful for incident mgmt since you don't know what you'll find, and will often have lots of people up your ass; having supernumerary bodies means I can throw them at something if I find an artifact or concern, and it also gives me a distraction-shield: I communicate only to Senior Engineer X, and all inquiries from Mgmt and Customers go to X; I only have to update X instead of 10+ irritated users/owners.
And to be fair, it's useful for incident mgmt since you don't know what you'll find, and will often have lots of people up your ass; having supernumerary bodies means I can throw them at something if I find an artifact or concern, and it also gives me a distraction-shield: I communicate only to Senior Engineer X, and all inquiries from Mgmt and Customers go to X; I only have to update X instead of 10+ irritated users/owners.
I’ve seen a version of this in sales where you have a welcoming call with the new client with the entire service team acting all cheery. Leaves the impression that their spend gets all those people when in reality it does not.
this would explain the cost surrounding SAP :)
The public already knows: the headcount graph trended upwards and accelerated in recent years until recently.
I joke with people in another department that we're a poaching ground for TikTok. Mostly, I work with people who have been at the company many years and are senior production engineers, so I can't appreciate dotcom-style spending in non-engineering business units. For the same space, Alphabet has 10x headcount compared to us.
I joke with people in another department that we're a poaching ground for TikTok. Mostly, I work with people who have been at the company many years and are senior production engineers, so I can't appreciate dotcom-style spending in non-engineering business units. For the same space, Alphabet has 10x headcount compared to us.
Is this actually true though?
The data seems to suggest that for most companies the trend was constant, and they just reached a point where it was no longer economical, which was exacerbated by hiring freezes halting attrition.
https://stratechery.com/2023/tech-layoffs-big-techs-hiring-r...
The data seems to suggest that for most companies the trend was constant, and they just reached a point where it was no longer economical, which was exacerbated by hiring freezes halting attrition.
https://stratechery.com/2023/tech-layoffs-big-techs-hiring-r...
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> Isn't a lot of this silliness due to them feeling like they needed to "poach" talented developers, so that the competion wouldn't get them?
Rumor.
Rumor.
A team of 3 star engineers can take on the world. It's a killer setup.
> I don't know what anyone else in the non-MPK/-FRE buildings here is doing, but 95% chance it's not engineering.
Are you saying there aren't engineers working outside of MPK/FRE (which is wrong) or that they're lazy (which is also wrong)?
Are you saying there aren't engineers working outside of MPK/FRE (which is wrong) or that they're lazy (which is also wrong)?
Woah, backup and chill. :)
Edit: I guess you don't work at Meta because there's "the assume the innocent take" thing. ;) I merely had the audacity to state a fact that the building where I work demonstrably contains few engineers because I sampled titles in the seating app.
Edit: I guess you don't work at Meta because there's "the assume the innocent take" thing. ;) I merely had the audacity to state a fact that the building where I work demonstrably contains few engineers because I sampled titles in the seating app.
Facebook felt culturally incapable of building good enterprise software products. Which is weird for a company that makes 90%+ of its revenue B2B.
I’m not sure it’s a bad thing, though. I’ve never seen an engineering-first enterprise software group. The business is just so sales-and-relationship driven.
Look at Amazon: you can plot the enshittification of their retail business with the rise of AWS. That’s not coincidence, it’s culture.
I’m not sure it’s a bad thing, though. I’ve never seen an engineering-first enterprise software group. The business is just so sales-and-relationship driven.
Look at Amazon: you can plot the enshittification of their retail business with the rise of AWS. That’s not coincidence, it’s culture.
There's 3 parts to the problem:
0. Lack of an enterprise sales org (think how VMware started or EDS or Perot Systems). I know an ex-Oracle sales guy who's itching to be an enterprise sales manager at Meta.
1. Lack of thoroughness in solving bugs and polish. Workplace video conferencing is damn good. Workplace the web and mobile apps have inconsistent and troublesome comment formatting bugs. I've sent task after task but they never get fixed. Basic things that should work don't.
2. Impact creates a cult that rewards new features while punishing better engineering and fixing things.
(My neighbor works for AWS high up. They treat most of their employees with borderline abuse.)
0. Lack of an enterprise sales org (think how VMware started or EDS or Perot Systems). I know an ex-Oracle sales guy who's itching to be an enterprise sales manager at Meta.
1. Lack of thoroughness in solving bugs and polish. Workplace video conferencing is damn good. Workplace the web and mobile apps have inconsistent and troublesome comment formatting bugs. I've sent task after task but they never get fixed. Basic things that should work don't.
2. Impact creates a cult that rewards new features while punishing better engineering and fixing things.
(My neighbor works for AWS high up. They treat most of their employees with borderline abuse.)
Having been on the other end of that B2B relationship, it's not surprising at all. FB treats their paying clients (advertisers) like dog shit and so far they've only gotten away with it because of their dominant position in the social media advertising market. Trying to break into an established market with their current attitude is not gonna work.
Oh really? Damn. Like an independent retailer or megacorp?
Are there any specifics to DM me worth running up the flag pole?
Are there any specifics to DM me worth running up the flag pole?
Ha haaaa. I'm sure mega-corps get a much better treatment.
Once your spend is high enough to get an account rep things get ooookaay. But in general the ad tools are bloated, buggy and loaded with dark patterns. And have been from the beginning.
Most serious advertisers and agencies use expensive third party tools that manage your ads using the advertising APIs.
I don’t think it’s worth “running up the flagpole”.
Most serious advertisers and agencies use expensive third party tools that manage your ads using the advertising APIs.
I don’t think it’s worth “running up the flagpole”.
Agencies yes, most serious advertisers probably not.
But even the b2b parts of Facebook are run like a b2ç business, because that's the culture.
But even the b2b parts of Facebook are run like a b2ç business, because that's the culture.
They had Workplace, which was a fantastic product that got shelved externally when they couldn't get a big payout early in the project.
It was the perfect Slack replacement for companies with over ~1000 employees, and I wish my current company was using it.
It was the perfect Slack replacement for companies with over ~1000 employees, and I wish my current company was using it.
I worked for a company that had both Slack and Workplace and... Workplace wasn't a Slack replacement at all? It felt like a separate instance of Facebook for our company. How would it act like a Slack replacement?
WP Chats could be vaguely similar to Slack -- there can be chats associated with a group, which is sort of like Slack named channels. But I agree it's not a perfect replacement.
I think people immediately cringe commingling their work and social lives. Personally I think it's a huge over-reach that Meta requires their employees use their personal account as their work one too, but maybe that's not true anymore?
As far as I can recall, I did not use my personal FB account while working at Meta last year. Some tiny detail of it may have been imported somewhere, but I definitely had a totally different account for Workplace.
Contingent workers, that's possible.
FTEs generally require an FB account to start the tech device provisioning process.
FTEs generally require an FB account to start the tech device provisioning process.
i don't think that's true anymore after project meiosis
There was recently a big memo about that. I have completely separate work and personal devices. (This was written on a personal device.)
The only thing that goes in from personal -> work is music or random home office photos.
The only things that go out from work -> personal are public résumé-level performance reviews, tax, and benefits information.
Exceptions on work devices include Github and streaming services, but otherwise not much else should be co-mingled. Everything else stays in its own domain.
(I don't use personal social media accounts so I'm the wrong target audience. Personal FB and Insta accounts are linked to work, and Github if you have one.)
The only thing that goes in from personal -> work is music or random home office photos.
The only things that go out from work -> personal are public résumé-level performance reviews, tax, and benefits information.
Exceptions on work devices include Github and streaming services, but otherwise not much else should be co-mingled. Everything else stays in its own domain.
(I don't use personal social media accounts so I'm the wrong target audience. Personal FB and Insta accounts are linked to work, and Github if you have one.)
I'm always a little shocked when I see someone who isn't keeping personal and work devices (and accounts) very intentionally separate.
They used to require linking a "personal" FB account as your employee account but recently (as in, like, 2021 or later) have a system that no longer requires this (including FTEs). Note that you could always create a throwaway personal FB account to be your employee account (and this is what I did).
ads is totally enterprise product
I’m not trying to be aggressive, but this is the kind of “just world hypothesis” reasoning you hear from people caught in layoffs.
Sometimes the people doing that kind of reasoning are hit next.
I’m not saying there’s no waste, but this is classic rationalizing.
Sometimes the people doing that kind of reasoning are hit next.
I’m not saying there’s no waste, but this is classic rationalizing.
> cult-of-toxic-positivity
I would love to hear details on a handful of instances of how this manifests. Toxic positivity, I don't know if I am to read that as like burying ones head in the sand, ears plugged singing la la la, ignorance is bliss or what not. What exact behavior would aggregate into a phrase like that? Very fascinating characterization of something interesting I'm sure.
I would love to hear details on a handful of instances of how this manifests. Toxic positivity, I don't know if I am to read that as like burying ones head in the sand, ears plugged singing la la la, ignorance is bliss or what not. What exact behavior would aggregate into a phrase like that? Very fascinating characterization of something interesting I'm sure.
>>> Toxic positivity is the pressure to only display positive emotions, suppressing any negative emotions, feelings, reactions, or experiences. It invalidates human experience and can lead to trauma, isolation, and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
https://www.betterup.com/blog/toxic-positivity
Acting like EVERYTHING that ANYONE does is AMAZING with zero accountability and retrospection on if that actually made any difference.
Yes, exactly. It's bad for both mental health and productivity because it denies reality (promotes dishonesty) and puts distance between people with phony, exhausting expectations. Being exceptionally good and real is the real thing. ;)
Life is so short, so why not be legit?
Life is so short, so why not be legit?
It also gaslights people into believing their negative emotions are their own fault, if everyone else pretends to be positive.
I actually wonder if you're an engineer at Meta because this isn't my experience at all. My whole team (in London) is working hard doing useful engineering work. The evaluation process is such that employees are pressured to deliver. I haven't seen anyone "relaxing".
To me, the problem with Meta is the constant focus on impact. There's little incentive to write robust software. Many tools are half-finished, fragile, poorly documented.
To me, the problem with Meta is the constant focus on impact. There's little incentive to write robust software. Many tools are half-finished, fragile, poorly documented.
FWIW they did have sales people trying to sell Workplace by FB but it just didn't go so well. Things like Microsoft Teams is so well entrenched (and "free" with the CIOs' Office 365 subscription) that there wasn't much to come for. Even Slack was (/is?) struggling..
The bundling bs sucks. The only reason MS has that many people using Teams is because it’s bundled (free) with the M365. It’s hot garbage.
I hate all those real time chat apps anyways.
I hate all those real time chat apps anyways.
Internally, everything and everyone uses Workplace. There is no email except for rare things. It's basically the same thing used by customers.
That's interesting. My team (not MPK) is completely overwhelmed! The entire team is hard working and not much relaxing unfortunately (could use some of that!)
Why doesn't Instagram have a native iPad app?
It seems like an immensely profitable project that would take a relatively small amount of resources.
iPad users likely have a GDP bigger than France, I don't know a single millionaire who doesn't have one... yet their ability to click ads is very restricted by the mini/stretched screen.
How does the culture allow so many non-core projects to get priority over this?
It seems like an immensely profitable project that would take a relatively small amount of resources.
iPad users likely have a GDP bigger than France, I don't know a single millionaire who doesn't have one... yet their ability to click ads is very restricted by the mini/stretched screen.
How does the culture allow so many non-core projects to get priority over this?
I'm biased (since I work at Slack) but, as a casual user, Workplace seems like an un-loved afterthought.
I don't think Meta is well-configured to make consumer-facing products that "surprise and delight", and Workplace's slightly janky interface is a clear symptom.
I don't think Meta is well-configured to make consumer-facing products that "surprise and delight", and Workplace's slightly janky interface is a clear symptom.
And I have to use Workplace everyday. :D
There's jank that can be fixed.
The problem with Slack is it creates an instant, continuous distraction noise barrage worse than email groups. We at least have a cultural norm of not DMing individuals (unless it's a SEV) and seeking info in group posts or maybe group chat.
There's jank that can be fixed.
The problem with Slack is it creates an instant, continuous distraction noise barrage worse than email groups. We at least have a cultural norm of not DMing individuals (unless it's a SEV) and seeking info in group posts or maybe group chat.
The problem with Workplace is that it looks much like Facebook, the UI/UX is not conducive to reading long-form posts, it's also a feed of posts organised in hard-to-find groups, there's no focus to guide me through a journey to actually enjoy using the product. Interaction with posts is an afterthought, threaded discussions do not exist, it's just a "dump" of information that seems to work for whatever use-case Meta had internally but was never translated to other B2B needs.
On the other hand, Slack is a simple communication tool where I can asynchronously coordinate with whatever team I need to get in touch with, it's exactly what I had asked for years at companies I worked for in decades prior to Slack: a well made IRC-like interface. It just works, with all its flaws and performance issues, it's still valuable. Workplace on the other hand is not valuable at all, it could disappear from the company stack of tools and I would never bat an eye. And I work for a global company, much smaller in size than Meta but definitely one that you either heard about or use our products.
On the other hand, Slack is a simple communication tool where I can asynchronously coordinate with whatever team I need to get in touch with, it's exactly what I had asked for years at companies I worked for in decades prior to Slack: a well made IRC-like interface. It just works, with all its flaws and performance issues, it's still valuable. Workplace on the other hand is not valuable at all, it could disappear from the company stack of tools and I would never bat an eye. And I work for a global company, much smaller in size than Meta but definitely one that you either heard about or use our products.
I’ve been at FB for many years and ~1 year ago moved somewhere where we use a mix of Slack/Google docs/confluence.
Perhaps it’s just because I got used to it, but I do miss Workplace a lot - mostly for allowing me to easily stay on top of what’s interesting to me.
* Workplace made it really easy to be on top of what’s happening in the company, and in what it thinks you’ll be interested in. The algorithmic feed was super helpful.
* I was able to follow along with what’s happening overall in the company and all the interesting to me info just with a few minutes at beginning of each day scrolling my Workplace feed. Now, with Slack / gdocs / emails, I would need to read all updates in hundreds of different Slack channels and figure out myself what’s relevant.
* Google Docs - super hard to find anything, or even know if it exists since everyone applies restrictive sharing options. With Workplace, I would write a post in the relevant group - easily searchable by everyone (and discoverable by being ranked on Workplace).
Perhaps it’s just because I got used to it, but I do miss Workplace a lot - mostly for allowing me to easily stay on top of what’s interesting to me.
* Workplace made it really easy to be on top of what’s happening in the company, and in what it thinks you’ll be interested in. The algorithmic feed was super helpful.
* I was able to follow along with what’s happening overall in the company and all the interesting to me info just with a few minutes at beginning of each day scrolling my Workplace feed. Now, with Slack / gdocs / emails, I would need to read all updates in hundreds of different Slack channels and figure out myself what’s relevant.
* Google Docs - super hard to find anything, or even know if it exists since everyone applies restrictive sharing options. With Workplace, I would write a post in the relevant group - easily searchable by everyone (and discoverable by being ranked on Workplace).
Same, Workplace is sorely missed.
Slack is good at synchronous communication, it’s a substitute for Workplace Chat.
Where I’m at now there is nothing similar to Workplace, which is great at asynchronous communication. On Slack content scrolls up the page and loses its engagement quickly. Also if someone does make a post that gets super high engagement in a channel I don’t regularly check, nothing will surface that post to me.
Slack is good at synchronous communication, it’s a substitute for Workplace Chat.
Where I’m at now there is nothing similar to Workplace, which is great at asynchronous communication. On Slack content scrolls up the page and loses its engagement quickly. Also if someone does make a post that gets super high engagement in a channel I don’t regularly check, nothing will surface that post to me.
We generally have that cultural norm too — I'm as likely to DM someone as I am to sidle up to them in the office.
I never feel like using Slack is stopping me from writing code, but when I'm waiting for a build or what-have-you I can look at channel updates asynchronously.
I never feel like using Slack is stopping me from writing code, but when I'm waiting for a build or what-have-you I can look at channel updates asynchronously.
> The problem with Slack is it creates an instant, continuous distraction noise barrage worse than email groups.
That's why I wrote localslackirc. To make having to be on slack bearable.
That's why I wrote localslackirc. To make having to be on slack bearable.
Workplace works reasonably well in my experience. It's basically Facebook. What do you find janky about it? My biggest complaints are around some of the weird defaults for video streams.
(My biggest gripe with Slack is how painful it makes replying to specific comments in the original channel. Neither Workplace chat nor Discord have this problem.)
(My biggest gripe with Slack is how painful it makes replying to specific comments in the original channel. Neither Workplace chat nor Discord have this problem.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/04/18/meta-la...
> “This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” Goler wrote.
> The company is expected to lay off what will likely be thousands of highly skilled employees — such as engineers and other technical staffers — who help build the company’s products, according to people familiar with the matter.
I wouldn't be so certain
> “This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” Goler wrote.
> The company is expected to lay off what will likely be thousands of highly skilled employees — such as engineers and other technical staffers — who help build the company’s products, according to people familiar with the matter.
I wouldn't be so certain
>You don't need any strategic hiring coordinating coordinators for higher-education.
Actually, you do!
Actually, you do!
Please help out us outsiders. My guesses are: MPK = Menlo Park? FRE = Fremont?
What does your team do exactly? Are you hiring or is there a hiring freeze for all teams?
Hiring freeze everywhere*.
* Supposedly not hiring freeze for senior ICs.
* Supposedly not hiring freeze for senior ICs.
Elon, stop it with the throwaways.
Balancing the books (books which are, mind you, awash in black ink) using people's livelihoods. How very dystopian.
Normal attrition rates, which are about 3% per month† for our industry, should be enough to manage even the worst hiring imbalances in a matter of months. Perfectly reasonable for a healthy and growing company like Facebook.
Specifically, a 3% monthly attrition rate would take Facebook from ~85k to ~60k in under a year. Maybe a bit longer to replace positions which they couldn't afford to downsize. Voluntary layoffs would help speed that up if necessary.
There's little reason for a healthy company to do layoffs unless their goal is sudden spikes in stock prices.
† https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t11.htm
Normal attrition rates, which are about 3% per month† for our industry, should be enough to manage even the worst hiring imbalances in a matter of months. Perfectly reasonable for a healthy and growing company like Facebook.
Specifically, a 3% monthly attrition rate would take Facebook from ~85k to ~60k in under a year. Maybe a bit longer to replace positions which they couldn't afford to downsize. Voluntary layoffs would help speed that up if necessary.
There's little reason for a healthy company to do layoffs unless their goal is sudden spikes in stock prices.
† https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t11.htm
In a downturn your natural attrition rate falls very quickly.
Data:
https://i.imgur.com/SwqhZX0.png
Data:
https://i.imgur.com/SwqhZX0.png
Probably also a bit dystopian to assume that normal attrition happens in a way that's favourable to business operations. You are defending personal attachments of individuals (livelihoods), while simultaneously referring to them as commodities (bodies in seats).
It's not an enviable position to be in, but it's naive to believe you can build a functional organization around natural turnover. If you were told you had to lose 36% of your body mass in a year I bet you'd want to pick where it came from over a random 3% per month extraction.
It's not an enviable position to be in, but it's naive to believe you can build a functional organization around natural turnover. If you were told you had to lose 36% of your body mass in a year I bet you'd want to pick where it came from over a random 3% per month extraction.
> You are defending personal attachments of individuals (livelihoods), while simultaneously referring to them as commodities (bodies in seats).
Not at all. Voluntary quitting on your own terms is very different from involuntary firing. And it's a fact that people quit a company regularly. There are ebbs and flows, but using natural attrition to your advantage as a company is a lot more humane an action than axing people in waves of layoffs to the same effect.
> If you were told you had to lose 36% of your body mass in a year I bet you'd want to pick where it came from over a random 3% per month extraction.
This assumes they are making highly considered choices for what talent they let go. Everything points to "they're not". Regardless, we're talking about a healthy, growing company with a good profit margin and outlook. There's likely no need to set such explicit numbers or timeframes unless you're looking to manipulate your market value.
Not at all. Voluntary quitting on your own terms is very different from involuntary firing. And it's a fact that people quit a company regularly. There are ebbs and flows, but using natural attrition to your advantage as a company is a lot more humane an action than axing people in waves of layoffs to the same effect.
> If you were told you had to lose 36% of your body mass in a year I bet you'd want to pick where it came from over a random 3% per month extraction.
This assumes they are making highly considered choices for what talent they let go. Everything points to "they're not". Regardless, we're talking about a healthy, growing company with a good profit margin and outlook. There's likely no need to set such explicit numbers or timeframes unless you're looking to manipulate your market value.
> If you were told you had to lose 36% of your body mass in a year I bet you'd want to pick where it came from over a random 3% per month extraction.
Anecdotal story, but the CEO of a company I worked for in the past told department managers to fire one person (exactly one, from each department) because they needed to reduce head count. That strategy sounds pretty random to me.
Anecdotal story, but the CEO of a company I worked for in the past told department managers to fire one person (exactly one, from each department) because they needed to reduce head count. That strategy sounds pretty random to me.
Arbitrary, yes, but almost the exact opposite of random.
Well, it is always 2-way street. Employees can leave employers and Employers can ask employees to leave. Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations.
The power imbalance between an employee and an employer means that no, it's absolutely not a 2-way street.
An employee (especially in the US) depends upon the employer for the money required for food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, etc. The employee depends on the employer to get health care. An average employee is 3-6 months of unemployment away from being homeless.
An employer does not, with very few exceptions, give a single fuck about any individual employee. They view those employees as expenses grudgingly accepted as necessary at the best of times, and expenses to be eliminated at the worst.
They are not equals. Contracts between them were not made with the consideration of equal parties.
An employee (especially in the US) depends upon the employer for the money required for food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, etc. The employee depends on the employer to get health care. An average employee is 3-6 months of unemployment away from being homeless.
An employer does not, with very few exceptions, give a single fuck about any individual employee. They view those employees as expenses grudgingly accepted as necessary at the best of times, and expenses to be eliminated at the worst.
They are not equals. Contracts between them were not made with the consideration of equal parties.
I disagree. I have a lot of options as an employee, as do most people. Health care is tough but cobra is helpful and ideally you'd find another job before you give notice.
Even lengthy interview processes are relatively cheap for me. Many companies have to pay recruiters 5 figure amounts to get someone. I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month.
People have options. Even low wage employees. The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave. That's why you see the manager behind the counter so often. If you don't believe me ask anyone working a service job how long they've been there and how many jobs they've had over the last 5 years. People jump around a lot. And training is a huge cost. Most employees aren't productive immediately, meaning that the company spends a lot of time and money training them with the expectation that they'll get some of that money invested back and you won't jump ship for a better job once you've been trained.
Finally most firms (esp Meta) give generous severance. Imagine you'd have to work for free for 3 months if you wanted to do something else.
Even lengthy interview processes are relatively cheap for me. Many companies have to pay recruiters 5 figure amounts to get someone. I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month.
People have options. Even low wage employees. The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave. That's why you see the manager behind the counter so often. If you don't believe me ask anyone working a service job how long they've been there and how many jobs they've had over the last 5 years. People jump around a lot. And training is a huge cost. Most employees aren't productive immediately, meaning that the company spends a lot of time and money training them with the expectation that they'll get some of that money invested back and you won't jump ship for a better job once you've been trained.
Finally most firms (esp Meta) give generous severance. Imagine you'd have to work for free for 3 months if you wanted to do something else.
> People have options. Even low wage employees.
How disconnected from reality can one be?
Do you hang out with low wage employees? The ones that need to keep a salary to feed their families, to shelter them, and to keep a bare minimum of life quality?
If you had friends with families in any low wage job you'd know that reality isn't that simple, it's such an absurd reduction of what it is to be employed in fields that aren't sexy, or where promotions don't exist as we expect in tech.
> The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave.
Yeah, they jump a lot because low wage jobs are usually the most toxic ones, with low wage abusive managers, because low wage is not conducive to hiring the best and brightest. If you ever had a bad manager, imagine that 10x worse: no psychologically safe, no trust environments are not conducive to long tenure. People are people, we feel when something isn't right for us, deciding to leave is not because there is a much better option somewhere else but there's a chance of a less bad option than the toxic environment they find themselves in.
Coupled that a well performing low wage employee might have to work with disengaged ones, the toxicity of the environment can only increase...
Get out of your bubble, it might help you to have solidarity with other human beings.
How disconnected from reality can one be?
Do you hang out with low wage employees? The ones that need to keep a salary to feed their families, to shelter them, and to keep a bare minimum of life quality?
If you had friends with families in any low wage job you'd know that reality isn't that simple, it's such an absurd reduction of what it is to be employed in fields that aren't sexy, or where promotions don't exist as we expect in tech.
> The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave.
Yeah, they jump a lot because low wage jobs are usually the most toxic ones, with low wage abusive managers, because low wage is not conducive to hiring the best and brightest. If you ever had a bad manager, imagine that 10x worse: no psychologically safe, no trust environments are not conducive to long tenure. People are people, we feel when something isn't right for us, deciding to leave is not because there is a much better option somewhere else but there's a chance of a less bad option than the toxic environment they find themselves in.
Coupled that a well performing low wage employee might have to work with disengaged ones, the toxicity of the environment can only increase...
Get out of your bubble, it might help you to have solidarity with other human beings.
I've worked low pay jobs. Restaurant, lifeguard and data entry. Nothing too hard but I have some sense. It doesn't sound like you have much experience and you're going off antidotes you hear on Reddit. Correct me if I'm wrong
But with businesses that rely on low wage jobs the edge of running the business is being an effective manager. Open a McDonald's franchise. They'll set you up such that it's basically turnkey. So what makes one McDonald's manager successful and another not? Managing low wage employees. That means not creating a toxic environment and treating them fairly so they don't leave so quickly. Managers spend hours training new employees. There's no benefit to being toxic or unreasonable because like you admitted, they'll leave. If someone leaves mid shift it means you're stuck working the register and their entire shift for the next few weeks till you find a train a replacement. It's also more paperwork to fill out to hire someone and get them setup in the system. You're delusional if you think managers don't care
People who think you can treat low wage workers poorly obv never been around low wage workers
Your argument is inconsistent. People don't leave because they need the job. But they leave jobs a lot because toxic managers. And managers are fine with being toxic because it costs them nothing to hire people and there's no distribution when people walk off.
I have solidarity with other people. The difference is I don't look down on them and remove their autonomy.
But with businesses that rely on low wage jobs the edge of running the business is being an effective manager. Open a McDonald's franchise. They'll set you up such that it's basically turnkey. So what makes one McDonald's manager successful and another not? Managing low wage employees. That means not creating a toxic environment and treating them fairly so they don't leave so quickly. Managers spend hours training new employees. There's no benefit to being toxic or unreasonable because like you admitted, they'll leave. If someone leaves mid shift it means you're stuck working the register and their entire shift for the next few weeks till you find a train a replacement. It's also more paperwork to fill out to hire someone and get them setup in the system. You're delusional if you think managers don't care
People who think you can treat low wage workers poorly obv never been around low wage workers
Your argument is inconsistent. People don't leave because they need the job. But they leave jobs a lot because toxic managers. And managers are fine with being toxic because it costs them nothing to hire people and there's no distribution when people walk off.
I have solidarity with other people. The difference is I don't look down on them and remove their autonomy.
I have worked on low paid jobs, in a developing country, when I wasn't even 16 years old yet, so I believe I have a bit more perspective of what toxicity exists in these environments. You lived through cushioned jobs (lifeguards, restaurants, data entry), not really a place where your co-workers are constantly abused by a manager that didn't even attend high school in a place where education is already pretty dire.
I feel our experiences are from vastly different worlds, McDonald's in my home country is one of the most abusive and toxic places to work for. As well as call centres, or any kind of low wage service job. Or working in the fields. All of those are low wage, toxic places to work at.
Your worldview is coloured by living in a developed country, most of humanity does not have that experience.
I feel our experiences are from vastly different worlds, McDonald's in my home country is one of the most abusive and toxic places to work for. As well as call centres, or any kind of low wage service job. Or working in the fields. All of those are low wage, toxic places to work at.
Your worldview is coloured by living in a developed country, most of humanity does not have that experience.
You're right. I don't know how the rest of the world operates. I have some idea of low wage jobs in the US which is a free and prosperous first world country. It's really the land of opportunity for the most vulnerable and im blessed to be here.
I should have prefaced my answer by stating that
I should have prefaced my answer by stating that
> I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month.
Congratulations, you're an outlier. I sincerely hope you enjoy your position while it lasts!
Congratulations, you're an outlier. I sincerely hope you enjoy your position while it lasts!
[deleted]
Yeah I used to have a constant stream of recruiters hitting me up. Never spent more than 3 months on a job search, even when I was trying to get my first “real” job as a 18-19 year old kid.
Then, around mid-December last year, it just stopped. I get an occasional recruiter every now and then but at this point I think I’m fucked.
Then, around mid-December last year, it just stopped. I get an occasional recruiter every now and then but at this point I think I’m fucked.
[deleted]
> Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations.
Companies use humans to get profits. Humans are developed by society, at the expense of society, a company has social obligations to that society as it's exploiting a resource we all deem quite valuable: a life.
A company depends on the society it decided to build upon, for its market, for its human resources, if we completely extract a company from any social obligation what you have is an amoral corpus of people with no incentive at all to care for the people it exploits...
And there's no 2-way street in a massive power imbalance like that, a company might not depend on a single employee for its survival, an employee definitely depend on a company and job for its survival. Being aware and recognising this power imbalance is a pretty good step for you to learn about solidarity.
Companies use humans to get profits. Humans are developed by society, at the expense of society, a company has social obligations to that society as it's exploiting a resource we all deem quite valuable: a life.
A company depends on the society it decided to build upon, for its market, for its human resources, if we completely extract a company from any social obligation what you have is an amoral corpus of people with no incentive at all to care for the people it exploits...
And there's no 2-way street in a massive power imbalance like that, a company might not depend on a single employee for its survival, an employee definitely depend on a company and job for its survival. Being aware and recognising this power imbalance is a pretty good step for you to learn about solidarity.
> Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations.
I'm not sure that only one has ethical obligations. But one party is a human being and the other is a legal fiction, and so I think most people would support the notion that the human being's needs are paramount.
I'm not sure that only one has ethical obligations. But one party is a human being and the other is a legal fiction, and so I think most people would support the notion that the human being's needs are paramount.
The company is made up of human beings, who this argument dehumanizes.
A company is made of human beings but it's not the human beings, the human beings can all shift around, leave, new ones come, but the company as it is still exist and is not driven by human values but by profit. Profit motive dehumanises anything it touches.
The company is owned by humans.
“We have to hurt people, otherwise how would we return profits to our investors” is the cardinal sin of the modern world. We’ve tied basic things like retirement to ever growing stock prices and cannot do anything to stand in the way of corporations sucking the world dry anymore.
In the case of layoffs, should a company instead invent work juts to keep people busy even if the company doesn’t consider that a good space to spend time on? Or if the workers don’t like it or find it pointless?
If so, would you think we should compel companies to aim for (near) zero profit and in the process create jobs / work even if that work isn’t important (e.g. putting luggage upright when it falls over on an airport carousel)?
If so, would you think we should compel companies to aim for (near) zero profit and in the process create jobs / work even if that work isn’t important (e.g. putting luggage upright when it falls over on an airport carousel)?
Sure, why not? IMO an employer should have a greater responsibility to its employees and its customers than to its investors.
There is a differences between "not important" and "not the most efficient way to increase shareholder value." Corporations regularly refuse to do work that I'd consider important as a customer because their investors don't see it as important.
There is a differences between "not important" and "not the most efficient way to increase shareholder value." Corporations regularly refuse to do work that I'd consider important as a customer because their investors don't see it as important.
"Corporations are people my friend". Thank you Mr. Romney.
What is your point? Yes, it's owned by humans.
Well, you wrote:
> and is not driven by human values but by profit. Profit motive dehumanises anything it touches
As a shareholder, I expect the company to be steered for long term profitability.
As do all the other shareholders, which also includes pension funds who in turn are there to provide security in retirement for millions of people.
I expect my hard earned money that I have invested not to be squandered, not to be unnecessarily paid to engineers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars if their work doesn't contribute meaningfully to the company's long term business.
I make separate charitable contributions for people in need. But a company is not the vehicle for that. Besides, the engineers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars at Meta do not need charity.
> and is not driven by human values but by profit. Profit motive dehumanises anything it touches
As a shareholder, I expect the company to be steered for long term profitability.
As do all the other shareholders, which also includes pension funds who in turn are there to provide security in retirement for millions of people.
I expect my hard earned money that I have invested not to be squandered, not to be unnecessarily paid to engineers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars if their work doesn't contribute meaningfully to the company's long term business.
I make separate charitable contributions for people in need. But a company is not the vehicle for that. Besides, the engineers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars at Meta do not need charity.
Attrition for a company that pays in the 95% percentile is going to be much lower than the industry average, especially when most of the other companies in that pay tier have also stopped hiring.
That's OK, they have time. Excellent revenue, billions of dollars of pure profit post-tax... Yeah, their growth in 2022 left much to be desired, but every year prior was pretty much exponential - the trend is still positive.
They can clearly afford to take the time to downsize naturally.
They can clearly afford to take the time to downsize naturally.
And attrition reduces the number of underpaid people, while you'd want to reduce the number of overpaid people.
And let's not forget social contagion: https://www.businessinsider.com/stanford-professor-mass-layo...
And shareholder pressure.
But as far as I have seen, it's been meaningless pressure, since the shareholders did nothing to companies who did not do mass layoffs at their behest.
But as far as I have seen, it's been meaningless pressure, since the shareholders did nothing to companies who did not do mass layoffs at their behest.
The company is run for and by shareholders, it’s not a charity so all of this is pretty understandable
> Normal attrition rates, which are about 3% per month† for our industry
How did you get the 3% from that link? If software falls under "information", then the the attrition rate indicated in the link is about 1.3%.
How did you get the 3% from that link? If software falls under "information", then the the attrition rate indicated in the link is about 1.3%.
Attrition at Meta is currently far below those rates.
Not every industry can be as utopic as UAW jobs.
So from 86000 last year they'll be going to 60000ish this year? That is pretty severe. For those of us in mature industries cyclic layoffs are just how things are but 25% shrinkage is scary.
Returning to 2020 levels. Says something about the hiring frenzy that went on.
It would show a decoupling between revenue and headcount, which is certainly bad news for tech workers. Meta's revenue in 2022 was 35% higher than 2020, 65% higher than 2019. If tech companies have found a way to simultaneously increase revenue and decrease headcount, the future of employment in tech would not be as rosy as its past.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-of...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-of...
In one of my previous company, there was a "keeping the light on" plan. It specified the minimum number of people needed to run the company. However, CEO was clear this was just managed decline and not a viable mode of operating the business.
It allowed the company to meet regulatory obligations. However, overtime, customers would leave because of the poor service.
Meta can likely run effectively with even less Engineers. However, the lack of exciting projects will prevent them from attracting top talent. Overtime their product offering will become less interesting than their competitors.
Napster, Tumblr and Yahoo are still around, however, they are a shadow of what they once were.
It allowed the company to meet regulatory obligations. However, overtime, customers would leave because of the poor service.
Meta can likely run effectively with even less Engineers. However, the lack of exciting projects will prevent them from attracting top talent. Overtime their product offering will become less interesting than their competitors.
Napster, Tumblr and Yahoo are still around, however, they are a shadow of what they once were.
I suspect “lack of exciting projects” is not driving people away as effectively as “tumbling stock price” and “likelihood of getting fired”.
Lack of exciting projects often manifests as 'difficulties building a positive career trajectory' in the promo system used at Meta.
I’m just saying, even if you get a promo and your stock-based comp jumps 30%, it’s a moot point if the stock itself has dropped 50%. Or, you know, you get laid off.
I suspect Twitter is also "dead walking" at this point.
Private equity will likely swoop in at some point to scavenge the carcass. However, I doubt that will happen before Elon watches most of his investment disappear in the bonfire.
You are under estimating the guys ability to get out of shit. Twitter is now private company as long as he no longer has to put more money into it he wont sell for less than what he paid as his ego won't allow it.
I think Elon does have to pay the debt interest rate if Twitter can’t add more debt to its books.
Did Twitter need to be more than keep the lights on?
I thought HN's refrain 2 years ago was how ridiculous it was that a simple product that didn't need to add features had a large headcount + how many businesses would be better off running stable instead of for growth.
Well, here we go.
I thought HN's refrain 2 years ago was how ridiculous it was that a simple product that didn't need to add features had a large headcount + how many businesses would be better off running stable instead of for growth.
Well, here we go.
> Did Twitter need to be more than keep the lights on?
In my view (early Twitter user, briefly worked at Twitter years ago), definitely yes. Twitter spent years bumping along and riding on their network effect. But that can't last forever. Twitter should have been energetically using their strengths to expand beyond their core product. For basically the same reasons that Google needed to be more than a search company. And toward the end of Jack's reign, they were finally showing signs of progress toward a decent level of product experimentation, so I had real hope for them.
In my view (early Twitter user, briefly worked at Twitter years ago), definitely yes. Twitter spent years bumping along and riding on their network effect. But that can't last forever. Twitter should have been energetically using their strengths to expand beyond their core product. For basically the same reasons that Google needed to be more than a search company. And toward the end of Jack's reign, they were finally showing signs of progress toward a decent level of product experimentation, so I had real hope for them.
I think it would be a pretty disingenuous argument that Musk's leadership is closer to "stable" than what was happening before, which is probably why you're the only one even alluding to it.
They are finally not losing money. Things are better at twitter and stable. And they are not as funded by advertising which is a win for many
Twitter was basically break-even before: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/
> And they are not as funded by advertising which is a win for many
That is "pony in there somewhere" levels of optimism about Musk wrecking relationships with Twitter's major source of revenue: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/17/advertisers-see-elon-mus...
> And they are not as funded by advertising which is a win for many
That is "pony in there somewhere" levels of optimism about Musk wrecking relationships with Twitter's major source of revenue: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/17/advertisers-see-elon-mus...
In terms of headcount.
No need to argue against a person, instead of the objective scenario I proposed.
No need to argue against a person, instead of the objective scenario I proposed.
Well, if twitter was bloated by a very big team it needs to be shrank first to become a smaller product.
All this bloated legacy code is still there and would have to be rewritten.
The teams that over-complicated the simple app wanted to show that they do something. When they are gone, their bloated code will not magically become small.
And no I dont think that Twitter layoffs were performed well. Just observing that those two things are not a contradiction.
On a side note: after upgrades of many apps or programs or websites that do them worse I often think that a lot of people complicate things or change things for the sake of showing that they are doing something.
All this bloated legacy code is still there and would have to be rewritten.
The teams that over-complicated the simple app wanted to show that they do something. When they are gone, their bloated code will not magically become small.
And no I dont think that Twitter layoffs were performed well. Just observing that those two things are not a contradiction.
On a side note: after upgrades of many apps or programs or websites that do them worse I often think that a lot of people complicate things or change things for the sake of showing that they are doing something.
What does Napster even do now? Can you imagine meeting someone who still works there? I’d have so many questions.
Most of the headcount is to maintain an advantage over competitors in a competitive market, thus ensuring future revenues.
It's mostly not for this year's revenue.
Related to this, the government now requires accounting Software Developer salaries to be amortized over 5 years, instead of all being booked in the year you pay them.
Edit: oops, the R&D portion of SWE salaries.
Edit2: Related to ensuring competition, this means that if your competitors slow down then you can too. If your competitors lay off, then you probably can to.
It's mostly not for this year's revenue.
Related to this, the government now requires accounting Software Developer salaries to be amortized over 5 years, instead of all being booked in the year you pay them.
Edit: oops, the R&D portion of SWE salaries.
Edit2: Related to ensuring competition, this means that if your competitors slow down then you can too. If your competitors lay off, then you probably can to.
> Related to this, the government now requires accounting Software Developer salaries to be amortized over 5 years, instead of all being booked in the year you pay them.
This is being discussed in another thread [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313
This is being discussed in another thread [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313
*The R&D portion of software developer salaries.
Things happen based on rates of change now, not just totals.
2021 was an abnormally high jump in revenue from 2020 for Meta. 2022 was a drop in revenue, but roughly a return to trend (there's a quite linear line from 2016 to 2022 revenue-wise).
It looks like they hired based on a wrong guess about Covid revenue growth acceleration being a longer-lasting thing than it was, and now that their revenue growth path is back to their old trend, they can't justify all of that.
2021 was an abnormally high jump in revenue from 2020 for Meta. 2022 was a drop in revenue, but roughly a return to trend (there's a quite linear line from 2016 to 2022 revenue-wise).
It looks like they hired based on a wrong guess about Covid revenue growth acceleration being a longer-lasting thing than it was, and now that their revenue growth path is back to their old trend, they can't justify all of that.
This ignores other factors. Like the push into the money losing Metaverse or the impact of Ask App not to track.
There’s significant latency between hiring and revenue.
There’s probably some Elon effect happening here too (“if he can do it, I should be able to do it too!”)
There’s probably some Elon effect happening here too (“if he can do it, I should be able to do it too!”)
Facebook should go all in, cut 80% out...
"If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out," -- Elon Musk..
"If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out," -- Elon Musk..
"Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April" -- Elon Musk, 2020
"I think we will be feature complete — full self-driving — this year," in a podcast interview. "Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year." -- Elon Musk, 2019
He says a lot of self-serving shit, there's no reason to cite him like an Oracle of Delphi.
"I think we will be feature complete — full self-driving — this year," in a podcast interview. "Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year." -- Elon Musk, 2019
He says a lot of self-serving shit, there's no reason to cite him like an Oracle of Delphi.
And let's not forget this classic from October 2019: "Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road. The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update. That's all it takes."
To be fair, the Oracle of Delphi was probably getting high on volcanic fumes, so she likely didn't do much better.
Well, that is the end game at some point.
Not many companies have eternal R&D.
At some point they move to exploit over explore.
Not many companies have eternal R&D.
At some point they move to exploit over explore.
Of course you can't make that case unless the growth in revenue continues as such.
They had 45k employees three years ago.
Maybe they were really hiring too much?
Maybe they were really hiring too much?
I really have a problem imagining what 86,000 employees do, even at a company like Meta
Ads, other apps like insta, Whatsapp, reliability, database management, I'm not sure, du they have own servers? Vr recently, AI, office clerks, r&d, moderation, other experimental apps that don't make it to production, managers, I guess they can have lower HC, but it's a multiapp global business with billions of users, I totally expect the number to be huge, especially to be competitive with other social apps like tiktok, twitter, telegram and others
Yep same.
I work for a telco that runs a national physical phone network, a high-speed home Internet fibre network in about a third of the country, retail stores across the country, call centers, a full sales & marketing team, plus a huge IT operation, and we are less than a third of that headcount.
To be fair, Meta is a global business with billions of users, so I'm sure it takes people to run all that, but it's still hard to rationalize.
I work for a telco that runs a national physical phone network, a high-speed home Internet fibre network in about a third of the country, retail stores across the country, call centers, a full sales & marketing team, plus a huge IT operation, and we are less than a third of that headcount.
To be fair, Meta is a global business with billions of users, so I'm sure it takes people to run all that, but it's still hard to rationalize.
Being global is a big part of it. Imagine trying to follow regulations for thousands of products that reside within the apps in every country in the world. You need to have engineers who can localize, work with legal teams who understand global and regional requirements. You need folks to work with the local version of the FTC if you are under consent agreements. Your HR team has to be experts in local employment law in every jurisdiction, especially during layoffs.
Folks who haven't worked on products that cross jurisdiction (and for a company that has a LOT of attention on it, due to being so much in the press) - it's just a completely different scale. Heuristics for headcount in a single country just don't really work.
Folks who haven't worked on products that cross jurisdiction (and for a company that has a LOT of attention on it, due to being so much in the press) - it's just a completely different scale. Heuristics for headcount in a single country just don't really work.
I don't get what facebook is doing with all that headcount in relation to their product and in comparison to other companies... even 20k feels too high, much too high still?!
Elon Musk has shown you can lay off 80% and still have the service is running.
It's now riddled with bugs and every other "reply" is an ad for a product completely unrelated to whatever tweet it's replying to.
No one outside of twitter was predicting it would just suddenly collapse, but instead a slow degradation of quality (ironic given that twitter is being marketed as the "#1 most accurate source of information on the internet")
The top tweet under every "More Tweets" section is always a childish Musk tweet with a 420 or 69 reference in it
No one outside of twitter was predicting it would just suddenly collapse, but instead a slow degradation of quality (ironic given that twitter is being marketed as the "#1 most accurate source of information on the internet")
The top tweet under every "More Tweets" section is always a childish Musk tweet with a 420 or 69 reference in it
>>every other "reply" is an ad for a product completely unrelated to whatever tweet it's replying to.
I find that very ironic. For years I have seen people complain about "target ads" and companies like twitter spying on everyone.
Now if they are not targeted some how that is also bad...
Amazing....
Though I will say I have seen a dozen HPE GreenLake ads on twitter and still have no idea what they are trying to sell me...
>> instead a slow degradation of quality (ironic given that twitter is being marketed as the "#1 most accurate source of information on the internet") The top tweet under every "More Tweets" section is always a childish Musk tweet with a 420 or 69 reference in it
These are not mutually exclusive... I find new twitter to be very informative and entertaining
I find that very ironic. For years I have seen people complain about "target ads" and companies like twitter spying on everyone.
Now if they are not targeted some how that is also bad...
Amazing....
Though I will say I have seen a dozen HPE GreenLake ads on twitter and still have no idea what they are trying to sell me...
>> instead a slow degradation of quality (ironic given that twitter is being marketed as the "#1 most accurate source of information on the internet") The top tweet under every "More Tweets" section is always a childish Musk tweet with a 420 or 69 reference in it
These are not mutually exclusive... I find new twitter to be very informative and entertaining
You are talking about two different types of ads. “We” hate targeted ads. “We” love context specific ads. When I search for “best EV to buy in 2023”, I’m more than happy to see a few results ads from Ford and VW. (That was the entire premise of Google when they started). But, learning that I’m interested in an EV because I messaged a friend on Instagram about it, or because I’m 35-45 years old, living in a “liberal city”, “making more than 200k”, and a “tree hugger” is what pisses people off - because that requires intense data collection about me and everything I do.
“We” like relevant ads and to be specific context-specific ads.
“We” like relevant ads and to be specific context-specific ads.
Getting context specific ads from a 140 character tweet is asking for the impossible.
And yet plenty of people are still there on twitter. There have been plenty of reasons to leave and some have (Mastodon is now up over 11M users) I count myself as one of those leavers. But so far there hasn't been a mass exodus, there have been several small exoduses. When you boil the frog slowly it tends to stay in the pot: that seems like what we're observing at twitter. The degradation has been slow enough that most users are ok with it, at least so far.
>When you boil the frog slowly it tends to stay in the pot: that seems like what we're observing at twitter.
This isn't true: according to sources I've read, attempting to slowly boil a frog will result in the frog jumping out of the pot. Frogs aren't that stupid, though humans apparently are.
This analogy is insulting to frogs. We should just change it to "When you boil the human slowly it tends to stay in the pot."
This isn't true: according to sources I've read, attempting to slowly boil a frog will result in the frog jumping out of the pot. Frogs aren't that stupid, though humans apparently are.
This analogy is insulting to frogs. We should just change it to "When you boil the human slowly it tends to stay in the pot."
Most Mastodon users are on both platforms
Facebook is on its slow decline either way. At this point the goal should be to try to slow the bleeding while they look for other revenue
> It's now riddled with bugs
Care to expand? Not a heavy twitter user, but somehow I saw more bugs pre-Musk(specially with changing network/VPN) than post-Musk.
Care to expand? Not a heavy twitter user, but somehow I saw more bugs pre-Musk(specially with changing network/VPN) than post-Musk.
My feed is absolutely filled with Musk/Tesla posts since the takeover. I had no idea so many people/accounts were “fans” of Tesla until my feed started filling up with it. No matter how many times I mark the tweets as not relevant I still get them. I’d consider that a bug. I also often refresh the feed or get a “scroll to top for new posts” button, action it, and get the same posts that were already on the feed. Also a new issue for me.
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This hasn’t been my experience but maybe that’s due to running an adblocker
The point of the business is not to keep the service running but to make a profit, and by all accounts Twitter is dramatically worse off on that front.
>>and by all accounts Twitter is dramatically worse off on that front.
And what accounts are those?
And what accounts are those?
I believe that would be accounts receivable.
considering Elon has cut 80% and still can’t turn profit there isn’t much counting going on.
The accounts by Elon where he cut its valuation from 44 billion to 20 billion to start. Or do we think its valuation dropped more than half with record breaking profits that aren’t disclosed?
We can use the accounts from advertisers and firms that have shared they no longer work with Twitter too.
We can use the accounts from advertisers and firms that have shared they no longer work with Twitter too.
Valuation is not profit. He massively over paid for twitter, everyone knew that, he knew that....
Twitter was never worth that, realistic valuation before the buyout announcement was closer to 25-30 billion, and they most likely were going into poor financial results that would have tanked the value further down to probably 20 or less.
>We can use the accounts from advertisers and firms that have shared they no longer work with Twitter too.
Lots of virtue signalling, many have come back, and most cut their ads spend for other reasons and on all platforms but used the twitter controversy to score some political points with the ESG crowd.
Twitter was never worth that, realistic valuation before the buyout announcement was closer to 25-30 billion, and they most likely were going into poor financial results that would have tanked the value further down to probably 20 or less.
>We can use the accounts from advertisers and firms that have shared they no longer work with Twitter too.
Lots of virtue signalling, many have come back, and most cut their ads spend for other reasons and on all platforms but used the twitter controversy to score some political points with the ESG crowd.
Who's come back? Recent articles[1] suggest the top ten advertisers have not and that revenue is down pretty far, so I suspect that's not quite right. I haven't seen any notable advertising consultancies start recommending folks resume their ad buys on Twitter. I would be extremely surprised if all ad buys, across all platforms, went down as much as Twitter's did. A handful are going to come back if you give them a really good deal, but that's not exactly recovering ad spend, just advertisers.
As for "the ESG crowd", who do you really mean?
1: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-12/elon-m...
As for "the ESG crowd", who do you really mean?
1: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-12/elon-m...
>>As for "the ESG crowd", who do you really mean?
Well people like the clearly biased and terrible writer that wrote the article you linked to for one...
>>Recent articles[1] suggest the top ten advertisers have not and that revenue is down pretty far, so I suspect that's not quite right.
that same report your article is citing says they project Twitter Ad Revenue to be 2020 levels, and he Cut costs Massively, so if he getting 2020 levels of Revenue, and has lowered costs believe 2020, then we can look to see if that would make the company profitable and it seems to me that would be a good possiblity.
Ohh know he does not have the Ultra Political activist marketing directors at these brands that are just one marketing misstep of becoming the next Bug Light....
Time will tell who is right, but I will always hope Free Speech wins over censorship.
Well people like the clearly biased and terrible writer that wrote the article you linked to for one...
>>Recent articles[1] suggest the top ten advertisers have not and that revenue is down pretty far, so I suspect that's not quite right.
that same report your article is citing says they project Twitter Ad Revenue to be 2020 levels, and he Cut costs Massively, so if he getting 2020 levels of Revenue, and has lowered costs believe 2020, then we can look to see if that would make the company profitable and it seems to me that would be a good possiblity.
Ohh know he does not have the Ultra Political activist marketing directors at these brands that are just one marketing misstep of becoming the next Bug Light....
Time will tell who is right, but I will always hope Free Speech wins over censorship.
>is citing says they project Twitter Ad Revenue to be 2020 levels
Yeah, and the CyberTruck shipped in 2020. You clearly aren't on Twitter despite your white-knighting. The ads are hilariously bad from scams to Alibaba level products.
>I will always hope Free Speech wins over censorship.
Which free speech? The one where Elon Bans you because you called him on something heinous?
Yeah, and the CyberTruck shipped in 2020. You clearly aren't on Twitter despite your white-knighting. The ads are hilariously bad from scams to Alibaba level products.
>I will always hope Free Speech wins over censorship.
Which free speech? The one where Elon Bans you because you called him on something heinous?
The last thing we need is to give the biggest spending advertisers more adspace.
I don't really need anymore branding ads for McDonald's, Disney, Apple or Budweiser.
I don't really need anymore branding ads for McDonald's, Disney, Apple or Budweiser.
I mean the valuation drop had little to do with him and was largely driven by macro or are we pretending other social media companies didn't get cut in half during the same period?
Facebook is still way off the highs and other's like Snap are floating around $10 when it peaked at $80. Twitter tanked from the changing macro environment not anything he did.
Facebook is still way off the highs and other's like Snap are floating around $10 when it peaked at $80. Twitter tanked from the changing macro environment not anything he did.
The servers are currently active and responding to requests, yes. There have been a lot of missteps since the acquisition though, I think party due to nobody to push back on feature requests coming from the top. No "can we look at some data" or "how about an a/b test." It's just straight from the top to production. I know most here are engineers but I honestly due appreciate product people thinking about that stuff.
At this point Twitter is likely way out of compliance with anything like GDPR. Users are finding that they are not actually able to fully delete their accounts. They remain there forever, but inactive. This by itself is a massive financial risk for the company. They are also being sued in at least one country for violating laws around speech.
Stability is maybe a little better than a few weeks ago, but we'll see. A car can go for a long time without doing any maintenance, but if you don't change the oil eventually even the best designed and engineered one is going to have a seized engine.
At this point Twitter is likely way out of compliance with anything like GDPR. Users are finding that they are not actually able to fully delete their accounts. They remain there forever, but inactive. This by itself is a massive financial risk for the company. They are also being sued in at least one country for violating laws around speech.
Stability is maybe a little better than a few weeks ago, but we'll see. A car can go for a long time without doing any maintenance, but if you don't change the oil eventually even the best designed and engineered one is going to have a seized engine.
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For how long though?
Even if it could run forever, just keeping it running isn't good enough. If you never make any improvements, your users are going to go to a different service that does.
Twitter already proved this isn't the case over the last 10 years.
Microsoft too: Windows is now ad-ware and users are still happily using it.
This is like saying you stopped changing your motor oil and the engine's still running.
All he has shown is that he was all image and appropriating others’ accomplishments.
I was there 2016-2022. The hiring boom in 2020 was definitely palpable. Entire vast orgs of teams who had no context on the problem they were solving, previous efforts, etc, because they were all so new.
I'll never understand how these companies literally doubled or tripled in size.
Nobody thought to themselves "maybe this zero-rate interest environment will end", or "maybe our business model is losing steam"?
No, instead they went full-on increasing headcount, leaving software engineers scratching their heads on exactly what they were supposed to be doing.
When discussions started about companies "poaching" talent so that others couldn't get them, I saw the writing on the wall. Possibly no role even lined up, but let's just get them onboard and we'll figure that out later.
I'm over 20 years into this career but am not FAANG. I like my boring, predictable companies for some reason, and they like me.
Nobody thought to themselves "maybe this zero-rate interest environment will end", or "maybe our business model is losing steam"?
No, instead they went full-on increasing headcount, leaving software engineers scratching their heads on exactly what they were supposed to be doing.
When discussions started about companies "poaching" talent so that others couldn't get them, I saw the writing on the wall. Possibly no role even lined up, but let's just get them onboard and we'll figure that out later.
I'm over 20 years into this career but am not FAANG. I like my boring, predictable companies for some reason, and they like me.
Or that every other 100K+ employee tech company has become sluggish, moribund, and then eventually faded away.
It makes a lot of sense when you consider the incentives of all the individuals involved. Individual line managers think "I need more headcount so I can increase my scope of responsibility and get promoted," and go to their directors with "These are all the cool new projects we could be undertaking if only we had headcount." Directors think "If I don't provide career-advancement opportunities for my best managers, they'll leave for a competitor and the best engineers will follow them, and my carefully-constructed org will collapse", then go to finance with "These are all the cool new projects we could be undertaking if only we had budget." Finance people look at the negative real interest rates that were present in 2020-2022, think "Just about any project that has any chance of generating additional usage or revenue beats the 2% nominal and -6% real returns we can get from the market, so these project ideas look pretty good" and tells the CEO "Our best bet is to invest in the company itself, so we are going to greenlight all the headcount requests."
It makes a lot of sense when you consider the incentives of all the individuals involved. Individual line managers think "I need more headcount so I can increase my scope of responsibility and get promoted," and go to their directors with "These are all the cool new projects we could be undertaking if only we had headcount." Directors think "If I don't provide career-advancement opportunities for my best managers, they'll leave for a competitor and the best engineers will follow them, and my carefully-constructed org will collapse", then go to finance with "These are all the cool new projects we could be undertaking if only we had budget." Finance people look at the negative real interest rates that were present in 2020-2022, think "Just about any project that has any chance of generating additional usage or revenue beats the 2% nominal and -6% real returns we can get from the market, so these project ideas look pretty good" and tells the CEO "Our best bet is to invest in the company itself, so we are going to greenlight all the headcount requests."
> Nobody thought to themselves "maybe this zero-rate interest environment will end", or "maybe our business model is losing steam"?
No one in management cares. The hiring and then firing is a feature, not a bug.
No one in management cares. The hiring and then firing is a feature, not a bug.
What no one wants to face is the possibility that the tech industry was increasingly becoming a jobs program for otherwise unemployable (at least, wrt the income they wanted/required to live a middle class, financially-independent lifestyle) college grads of a certain pedigree. If you think the crisis of (often justified) Millennial whining and despair is bad now, imagine an alternate reality where millions of even our brightest and most well-connected couldn't find work after college - or worse, were only able to find work that didn't pay their bills or that forced them to move home (rather than these fates being limited to the average graduate) . Offices empty, downtowns and office park-adjacent strip malls seize up, Tesla never gets off the ground (okay, yes, I know, bear with me). Essentially, you eliminate a substantial portion of the consumer market, because everyone in the prime of their non-medical-expense-driven-consumption life is broke. We managed to stave off that Armageddon for a decade, and if it meant entire branches of multi-billion-dollar corporations were spending 90% of the work day comparing Soylent bars and playing Fortnite (dependent, of course, on you're having chosen the right school, major, or parents), then so be it.
Look at what the business of these companies was. None of them needed this many non-customer-service personnel. But that many people needed jobs.
Look at what the business of these companies was. None of them needed this many non-customer-service personnel. But that many people needed jobs.
I think there may have been some government financial incentive but I wonder if there was a sense early on, in no small part due to the terrible media and government messaging FUD around Covid, that there would be significant death and debilitation that could have a meaningful impact on available talent, so they decided to get some extras and/or secure some off the market in advance.
> Entire vast orgs of teams who had no context on the problem they were solving, previous efforts, etc, because they were all so new.
To be frank, that was my opinion of Facebook before you were hired.
To be frank, that was my opinion of Facebook before you were hired.
I was there 2013-18. The company doubled in size every year, so it was normal. Was 2020 worse than that?
Also, the stock price literally never decreased between when I accepted my offer and when I finished, so clearly I was holding it all together \s.
Also, the stock price literally never decreased between when I accepted my offer and when I finished, so clearly I was holding it all together \s.
Layoffs may be needed. But there should be a healthy dose of executives included for making those hiring decisions. And they should do it all at once. Doing it in waves is absolutely brutal.
I worked for about a decade in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, at a time (90's) when it was mostly moving out of Silicon Valley (and then overseas). There was a clear pattern that companies that hadn't done layoffs very often, were clumsier (which often felt like "brutal" to those affected), and the ones who had done it through several previous downturns were less clumsy at it.
One of the lessons that companies learned, is that you should do it all in one wave and be done with it (until the next recession), rather than hoping that a small one is all you will need, and realizing a few months later that you were wrong and need to do it again.
One of the lessons that companies learned, is that you should do it all in one wave and be done with it (until the next recession), rather than hoping that a small one is all you will need, and realizing a few months later that you were wrong and need to do it again.
I was talking to a neighbor who works at AWS. Asked how it was going and he said so far so good "I've survived 3 layoffs so far". And I was like, "3 layoffs? I thought there was only one so far?" and he replied that there have been a couple others that weren't publicized so much.
Theres been 3 layoffs at Amazon so far, but not all three have been focused on AWS. The first targeted HR/recruiting, the second physical stores and .com, and this current third one is hitting AWS and ads.
I heard a similar story from someone I know at AWS.
I have a hard time believing it - the journos are interested in the kind of muck and if there have been additional 2 rounds of layoffs how did they keep it quiet?
Layoffs happen at different scales within a company. Individual departments can have layoffs that aren't newsworthy. If someone's budget gets cut, they might have to layoff a number of people.
The reason the big layoffs are newsworthy is that they impact most or all of the company at once. The big layoffs are usually associated with company-wide hiring slowdowns. The individual org/department layoffs are often not really noteworthy in the context of the entire company.
The reason the big layoffs are newsworthy is that they impact most or all of the company at once. The big layoffs are usually associated with company-wide hiring slowdowns. The individual org/department layoffs are often not really noteworthy in the context of the entire company.
I feel like I'd have read about it on twitter or mastodon or whatever else people are using these days.
Might be the difference between a legally disclosed layoff and “my whole org was gutted by our director” but not big enough to require a legal disclosure.
Seriously? Just google it, there's plenty of articles. And unless the OP is lying (they're not), they're literally providing you with info from a firsthand source.
Whats with HN and sealioning in every freaking comment lately?
Whats with HN and sealioning in every freaking comment lately?
thats not what a firsthand source is - I would have to trust that two anonymous people were telling the truth.
Also, not trusting everything you're told without evidence of some kind isn't sealioning, and nobody is required to trust randoms when they make sourceless claims.
Maybe keep your outrage to yourself because you becoming toxic when people don't accept sourceless claims doesn't do anything but show the world you're having trouble being civil in response to...a request for some kind of evidence of a claim by anonymous people. Just relax and move on instead of being outraged.
Also, not trusting everything you're told without evidence of some kind isn't sealioning, and nobody is required to trust randoms when they make sourceless claims.
Maybe keep your outrage to yourself because you becoming toxic when people don't accept sourceless claims doesn't do anything but show the world you're having trouble being civil in response to...a request for some kind of evidence of a claim by anonymous people. Just relax and move on instead of being outraged.
[deleted]
Doing one perfect layoff that hits the exact target is ideal in theory, but it's really hard to do at this scale. Meta is so big that it can take many months to sort through everything. Logistically, a couple rounds of layoffs can make more sense than trying to force it all to happen at once.
There's also a big risk of cutting too deep. If you try to downsize the company to hit some gloomy economic outlook that turns out to be too pessimistic, you might have to rapidly rehire. It can be better to make a few incremental changes to the company with some time to reassess in between.
So yes: One, single, perfect layoff is ideal. But the real world isn't ideal. The real ideal would have been to not overhire in the first place, but everyone is trying to hit a moving target with the economy and the job market.
Rolling layoffs are terrible, though. My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end. Orgs would change, spend a few weeks trying to get things back on track with whoever was left, then layoffs would rearrange the company again. Meta is at least being precise about implementations and timing.
There's also a big risk of cutting too deep. If you try to downsize the company to hit some gloomy economic outlook that turns out to be too pessimistic, you might have to rapidly rehire. It can be better to make a few incremental changes to the company with some time to reassess in between.
So yes: One, single, perfect layoff is ideal. But the real world isn't ideal. The real ideal would have been to not overhire in the first place, but everyone is trying to hit a moving target with the economy and the job market.
Rolling layoffs are terrible, though. My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end. Orgs would change, spend a few weeks trying to get things back on track with whoever was left, then layoffs would rearrange the company again. Meta is at least being precise about implementations and timing.
> My last company would do seemingly random layoffs every other week for months on end.
This sounds like my current company. Only a few truly announced layoffs, but every few weeks we quietly lose another round of people, usually entire teams. The rest of us are split between hoping to be in the next round, and just jumping ship.
This sounds like my current company. Only a few truly announced layoffs, but every few weeks we quietly lose another round of people, usually entire teams. The rest of us are split between hoping to be in the next round, and just jumping ship.
>they should do it all at once
When I was last laid off, the meeting was concurrent with my friend on another team.
I was not laid off by my manager but my 2x skip; other members of my team were laid off, presumably at the same time, by someone else in our CoC.
So based on these observations, I think for security etc reasons you need to lay people off all at once in batches. Too easy for lag to create ‘insider/outsider threat’ situations.
Obviously my points are redundant if you just do it over email.
When I was last laid off, the meeting was concurrent with my friend on another team.
I was not laid off by my manager but my 2x skip; other members of my team were laid off, presumably at the same time, by someone else in our CoC.
So based on these observations, I think for security etc reasons you need to lay people off all at once in batches. Too easy for lag to create ‘insider/outsider threat’ situations.
Obviously my points are redundant if you just do it over email.
While you cannot fire everyone in the same second, you can have batches over a few days. There's no need for waves that span over months. If anything, the risk of IP theft is much bigger if people have weeks of uncertainty if they'll be affected by the next layoff.
Anybody want to predict how the market will react to this?
My take is that it will be a negative response. They've already shed a lot of workforce -- at this point they are still facing revenue growth loss more than they'll save in costs from reduced headcount -- and I think it's unlikely they'll be able to fire folks into a convincing story about future profit growth ...
To me it's clear they are no longer a machine able to turn ever expanding quantities of engineering talent into ever ever expanding monetary growth ...
so what's left to value in their overall organizational brand?
Personally I think they have an enormous amount of technical and organizational talent still in their ranks -- but ... why? Why will they stay and try hard to chase after whatever the next gravy fad train might be? Seems like it won't be the meta verse ... and if the next fad is really going to be "ai" -- could there really be enough talent that can really stomache the thought of allowing instagram to be the one to control the worlds first super intelligent agi ...?
My take is that it will be a negative response. They've already shed a lot of workforce -- at this point they are still facing revenue growth loss more than they'll save in costs from reduced headcount -- and I think it's unlikely they'll be able to fire folks into a convincing story about future profit growth ...
To me it's clear they are no longer a machine able to turn ever expanding quantities of engineering talent into ever ever expanding monetary growth ...
so what's left to value in their overall organizational brand?
Personally I think they have an enormous amount of technical and organizational talent still in their ranks -- but ... why? Why will they stay and try hard to chase after whatever the next gravy fad train might be? Seems like it won't be the meta verse ... and if the next fad is really going to be "ai" -- could there really be enough talent that can really stomache the thought of allowing instagram to be the one to control the worlds first super intelligent agi ...?
I think the markets have already priced this in, so there will be basically no reaction. Zuck has more or less announced the cuts already.
"but ... why?" they have a ton of talent because they pay top of band and they staff their workforce with great employees. Great talent wants to be paid well and wants to work with great talent, meta has both.
For what its worth, meta has more employees now than they had in Q1 2022, and these next rounds of layoffs put them at staffing levels of like Q3 2021. The reality is that Meta and other huge companies grew headcount faster than revenue, and need to unwind some decisions they made.
"but ... why?" they have a ton of talent because they pay top of band and they staff their workforce with great employees. Great talent wants to be paid well and wants to work with great talent, meta has both.
For what its worth, meta has more employees now than they had in Q1 2022, and these next rounds of layoffs put them at staffing levels of like Q3 2021. The reality is that Meta and other huge companies grew headcount faster than revenue, and need to unwind some decisions they made.
You seem to be totally correct. Meta ticker is flat today.
In addition, there are other dynamics here. Meta is torching through cash building this Metaverse, and there is no clear horizon or plan. It's going to give a lot of investors pause before jumping in.
In addition, there are other dynamics here. Meta is torching through cash building this Metaverse, and there is no clear horizon or plan. It's going to give a lot of investors pause before jumping in.
> Anybody want to predict how the market will react to this?
I suppose the markets have already reacted to this. This has been announced a couple of months ago.
I suppose the markets have already reacted to this. This has been announced a couple of months ago.
> so what's left to value in their overall organizational brand?
They have the worlds greatest dataset of everyone - their posts, their photos, their social graph. Now train generative AI on this.
They can build personal and unique AI products that no one else can at their scale because they’ve sent the last 20 years getting to know everything about everyone.
They have the worlds greatest dataset of everyone - their posts, their photos, their social graph. Now train generative AI on this.
They can build personal and unique AI products that no one else can at their scale because they’ve sent the last 20 years getting to know everything about everyone.
In theory true. In practice, I'm not convinced that the company Meta actually can do this.
Maybe not in their current state but they have the resources to hire the people that can.
The market already reacted this is old news
No, the brokers have to drive into work tomorrow and sell their pieces of paper that say Meta on them, based on information they have read in the print version of this article.
To me, it seems that nearly every layoff (especially recently) in tech results in a small spike in the stock price due to 'cost savings' and 'willing to make hard choices'
I've always heard the adage "cut once, cut deep" to avoid repeated destruction of morale. Anyone care to speculate about Meta's rationale behind repeated cuts?
Zuck actually posted about this on his Facebook[0].
Short answer is the first layoffs (seemingly) were rather random as far as who was affected. This new round is a lot more deliberate by
1. Cutting projects/efforts that don't make the cutline
2. Letting go the surplus of people previously needed to execute on those projects
> Since we reduced our workforce last year, one surprising result is that many things have gone faster. In retrospect, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower priority projects.
> It's tempting to think that a project is net positive as long as it generates more value than its direct costs. But that project needs a leader, so maybe we take someone great from another team or maybe we take a great engineer and put them into a management role, which both diffuses talent and creates more management layers. That project team needs space, and maybe it tips its overall product group into splitting across multiple floors or multiple time zones, which now makes communication harder for everyone. That project team needs laptops and HR benefits and may want to recruit more engineers, so that leads us to hire even more IT, HR and recruiting people, and now those orgs grow and become less efficient and responsive to higher priority teams as well. Maybe the project has overlap with work on another team or maybe it built a bespoke technical system when it should have used general infrastructure we'd already built, so now it will take leadership focus to deduplicate that effort. Indirect costs compound and it's easy to underestimate them.
> A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster. People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling. We will become an even greater magnet for the most talented people. That's why in our Year of Efficiency, we are focused on canceling projects that are duplicative or lower priority and making every organization as lean as possible.
[0]: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/pfbid024Q9h2gvnYGmU6czAH...
Short answer is the first layoffs (seemingly) were rather random as far as who was affected. This new round is a lot more deliberate by
1. Cutting projects/efforts that don't make the cutline
2. Letting go the surplus of people previously needed to execute on those projects
> Since we reduced our workforce last year, one surprising result is that many things have gone faster. In retrospect, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower priority projects.
> It's tempting to think that a project is net positive as long as it generates more value than its direct costs. But that project needs a leader, so maybe we take someone great from another team or maybe we take a great engineer and put them into a management role, which both diffuses talent and creates more management layers. That project team needs space, and maybe it tips its overall product group into splitting across multiple floors or multiple time zones, which now makes communication harder for everyone. That project team needs laptops and HR benefits and may want to recruit more engineers, so that leads us to hire even more IT, HR and recruiting people, and now those orgs grow and become less efficient and responsive to higher priority teams as well. Maybe the project has overlap with work on another team or maybe it built a bespoke technical system when it should have used general infrastructure we'd already built, so now it will take leadership focus to deduplicate that effort. Indirect costs compound and it's easy to underestimate them.
> A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster. People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling. We will become an even greater magnet for the most talented people. That's why in our Year of Efficiency, we are focused on canceling projects that are duplicative or lower priority and making every organization as lean as possible.
[0]: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/pfbid024Q9h2gvnYGmU6czAH...
All of these sound like basic lessons from anyone who has performed large layoffs for the first time...
The rationale is probably something like, "oops; well crap". Meta hasn't done this very often.
They are probably trying to shake the tree. Voluntary departures save the firm on severance.
This used to apply back in the day. Nowdays corporations don't give a fudge and will do multiple rounds if it helps them optimize for the short term.
This coupled with lack of hiring really really sucks right now but I am sure the wheel will turn.
This coupled with lack of hiring really really sucks right now but I am sure the wheel will turn.
Damn, that’s the third time Zuck takes full responsibility.
It’s probably hard on him.
It’s probably hard on him.
Good luck to those employees waiting to know their fate. It must be very stressful.
Engineers obviously affected.
As long as the stock goes up after buying at $88, then keep it going to save money.
Meta will survive. It just needs to unload more unnecessary hires and adjust to save more money in the long term.
All caused by the over hiring mania followed by the unsustainable zero interest rate phenomenon and a decade long quantitative easing bubble that had to end.
As long as the stock goes up after buying at $88, then keep it going to save money.
Meta will survive. It just needs to unload more unnecessary hires and adjust to save more money in the long term.
All caused by the over hiring mania followed by the unsustainable zero interest rate phenomenon and a decade long quantitative easing bubble that had to end.
The zero interest rate and quantitative easing was available to non SV companies, though, and they went through much milder bubbles. There's definitely something specific about tech mania.
And now AI company will hoover up the talent, maybe the monetary and fiscal policies will slow that bubble down a bit.
And now AI company will hoover up the talent, maybe the monetary and fiscal policies will slow that bubble down a bit.
This just feels like a convenient story. Why would tech companies, who bring in billions in profits each quarter, be so dependent on zero interest loans? If anything, the non-SV companies reducing their ad spend would be a bigger contributor, assuming that has happened?
Ignore Meta, think about how many nonprofitable tech companies were built by basically throwing money at growth the last 10 years. Then think about how early investors were rewarded, not by turning profitable, but by going public or getting acquired. That entire pipeline was built by cheap money.
Because development has high upfront costs. You need to build something before you can collect any money. That means lots of expensive engineers. When building is nearly free (free money now at expense of tomorrow’s cash flow), you build things to sell tomorrow.
Businesses of all sorts get loans when the rate is good. It’s a business cash flow thing.
Look at the SEC filings for all big tech companies. They discuss their billions in debt.
Businesses of all sorts get loans when the rate is good. It’s a business cash flow thing.
Look at the SEC filings for all big tech companies. They discuss their billions in debt.
> Why would tech companies, who bring in billions in profits each quarter, be so dependent on zero interest loans?
At least in the case of Facebook and Google, they were getting revenue from the rest of the startups that were dumping cheap money into marketing for growth. When that cheap money dries up for the startups it dries up for GOOG and FB as well.
At least in the case of Facebook and Google, they were getting revenue from the rest of the startups that were dumping cheap money into marketing for growth. When that cheap money dries up for the startups it dries up for GOOG and FB as well.
The ones that bring in billions in profits are less dependent, of course, but even those will carry loans on their books. Why not, if money is free. Each large corporation has essentially an investment bank on the inside.
Because of growth expectations brought by their evaluations
Maybe META can shed users, too, and replace them with AI chat bots
That already happened years ago, in my experience
Given the quality of discourse I've seen in many Facebook threads, ChatGPT could do a lot better.
Facebook's Android application has been riddled with bugs for months, overrun with ads and now they are cutting the workforce. It'll be interesting.
On the developer side, they’re even closing down their API bug tracker, having first dropped from 95% 30 day resolution to 56%.
Ironically this will most probably help as most companies now understand that putting more people on the same piece of software doesn't really help but make it worse.
I hope it helps them. At my company, there were efforts to compartmentalize our web application to make it more scalable for adding more features inside it. I left before I saw this effort in action, but the principles it was based on were solid. I believe some applications could be compartmentalized so that adding more features/teams would bring more value (without making it worse) however, I might be wrong.
You still need to keep the remaining employees engaged, though.
Adding workforce is not useful != removing workforce is
Adding workforce is not useful != removing workforce is
They make a lot more money on iOS, so it's a sensible business decision to spend less engineering resources on Android.
The iOS app had more than 18,000 classes (in 2015, god knows how many it is now).
https://darkcoding.net/software/facebooks-code-quality-probl...
https://darkcoding.net/software/facebooks-code-quality-probl...
> Meta’s next round of cuts shows that this isn’t the end of tech layoffs, it’s only the beginning of the next wave.
I don't see how it says anything either way.
I don't see how it says anything either way.
Perfect time for me to be looking for a new job :/
Job market continues to be terrible... Ugh...
The job market is still pretty strong. It was wildly overheated in 2021.
Hm, my tech job tracker[0] shows that it's probably one of the worst hiring markets ever. Where do you see that the market is still strong?
[0] https://www.hnhiringtrends.com/
[0] https://www.hnhiringtrends.com/
That's a hugely biased source, of course.
Assuming you're in the US (as HN is biased in that way, and you're using HN as a source), the unemployment rate seems to hover around ~3.5% for the last year, and it was ~6% two years ago. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Assuming you're in the US (as HN is biased in that way, and you're using HN as a source), the unemployment rate seems to hover around ~3.5% for the last year, and it was ~6% two years ago. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
There's no way tech is big enough to move that number significantly. It's like repeated sf arguments how the city is dominated by software, except even that city is mostly service and finance jobs.
Dec '22 Master's grad + math undergrad here. 4.0 GPA, research + internship experience. 4 months of applications and only 1 interview. Might as well apply to a shredder.
Graduated into a recession myself. If you can't get hired right away, the situation only compounds, so buckle up. No one's advice helped. Was eventually told by several internal recruiters at job fairs that companies were loath to hire someone more than 6 months out of college who hadn't found employment in the field. Spent years working unrelated jobs, barely scraping by. My debt ballooned. Talking to anyone online typically ended with being told that the problem must be with me; the market was recovering, so I probably just suck. It's depressing to be an outsider looking to get a break. It's easy to lose confidence in yourself.
It took me years and a lot of luck to claw my way into developer roles. And you know what? It wasn't me. I didn't suck. Life had just dealt me a bad hand (one of several).
Not to say everything is great now. I missed out on years' worth of promotions, investments, and retirement savings. I'll probably never achieve fu money or so much as retire early. But I'm hardly hurting financially nowadays.
Which is all to say, hey, I hear ya. Hang in there.
It took me years and a lot of luck to claw my way into developer roles. And you know what? It wasn't me. I didn't suck. Life had just dealt me a bad hand (one of several).
Not to say everything is great now. I missed out on years' worth of promotions, investments, and retirement savings. I'll probably never achieve fu money or so much as retire early. But I'm hardly hurting financially nowadays.
Which is all to say, hey, I hear ya. Hang in there.
Sorry if you're already doing this, but you should focus 100% of your effort on networking, don't bother sending out any applications ever. You need a referral to put your name on the top of the list unless you went to MIT or something
Friends, family, family friends, old professors, old professors' friends, online game clan members, etc
Friends, family, family friends, old professors, old professors' friends, online game clan members, etc
The positive here is you are going to learn to hustle. Anyone who entered the market in 2020 probably lazily sent out a few applications via job boards and had a position in a month.
You will have it way harder, but stay positive and keep at it. Keep iterating on your resume and personal website. Apply to large numbers of jobs and if you find a position you really like then hunt down someone you can email or figure out how to get a referral. You will embarrass yourself, look foolish and have to feel needy.
This sucks but it is also an opportunity to get super desperate. That desperation will result in some skills that we wouldn't normally gain.
You will have it way harder, but stay positive and keep at it. Keep iterating on your resume and personal website. Apply to large numbers of jobs and if you find a position you really like then hunt down someone you can email or figure out how to get a referral. You will embarrass yourself, look foolish and have to feel needy.
This sucks but it is also an opportunity to get super desperate. That desperation will result in some skills that we wouldn't normally gain.
Graduated into the 08 recession. Knowing what I know now , I would have drawn out my graduation date as much as possible until the market started to improve. See if there's a way you can work for/affiliate yourself with some lab and in 2024 you will be able to pretend as if you're fresh out of academia and have never looked for a job yet.
The above is really good advice. I went back to get a PhD in 2008 because I couldn't get a job, and it was definitely the right move (for me, at least).
You’re doing it wrong. 1 interview means you need to spend more time personalizing yourself to the applications. Start cold messaging people on LinkedIn at the company who went to your alma matter, spam blind, whatever it takes to get a connect at the company.
The market for mid-level and up is fine.
As someone who's pretty good at the interview games and have been trying to help some fresh grads and laid off juniors get hired. It is rough right now.
As someone who's pretty good at the interview games and have been trying to help some fresh grads and laid off juniors get hired. It is rough right now.
It really is. I do often reach out and try networking on LinkedIn with no luck. I have connections to quite a few companies I'd love to work for, and no its not FANG, who recommend me often whenever a position pops up, but still no luck.
[deleted]
Are teams waiting to see if ChatGPT4 can pick up the slack instead of initiating a new job opening?
[deleted]
Idk how you think it's strong. Have you actually looked for a tech job in the last few months?
One job I interviewed for, they told me they had to turn off the listing because they got too many applicants.
There might be jobs if your totally desperate. Some bottom of the barrel jobs are out there. But accepting total comp decreases between 150k to 60k,along with return to office and limited vacation days again doesn't feel strong.
One job I interviewed for, they told me they had to turn off the listing because they got too many applicants.
There might be jobs if your totally desperate. Some bottom of the barrel jobs are out there. But accepting total comp decreases between 150k to 60k,along with return to office and limited vacation days again doesn't feel strong.
If you're seeing 150k decrease I can only assume you were getting an exorbitant rate not too long ago. Getting $600k to write REST APIs was an aberration and will probably never come back. You can still earn an upper middle class salary at a financial company or retail very easily.
300+ total, 180 base. down to mid 100s. Idk why you think Im just writing rest apis. Stuff I worked on and wrote about have been interesting enough to make it to the front page here
sure, if you feel like applying to the companies claiming unfilled positions:
Chipotle, Mcd's, Target, Walmart
etc
Chipotle, Mcd's, Target, Walmart
etc
[deleted]
No it isn't. Please substantiate your claim. I've been unemployed for over half a year. And I am not some inexperienced newb.
And nobody here is talking about about the complete failure of that useless metaverse which is solely the responsibility of Zuck? He should fire himself for his failures...
I'm an engineer at Meta waiting to hear my fate. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, I want to be gone by the end of the year because of leadership.
The "I don't foresee more layoffs" line in November was bad. I understand that circumstances change, but other than SVB (which was contained and didn't really impact Meta), there wasn't much between November and March. This shows a lack of foresight beyond around a month, not to mention how haphazard the layoffs were.
NYT reported that execs are phoning it in. I have no first-hand knowledge of it, but I believe it.
Zuck missed TikTok. He wasn't ready for Apple's privacy changes. Rather than paying attention to competitors, he was busy building a failed cryptocurrency and the metaverse. Unless letting TikTok take hold was a big brain plan to get lawmakers to stop looking at Meta.
The rebrand was poorly timed. It was almost exactly at the stock peak before reality started setting in.
Sheryl left.
Then there's the overhiring, but at least everyone else in the industry did it, so that's merely average performance.
I don't like it as an investment, and I'm having a hard timing making the case for it being somewhere I want to work.
The "I don't foresee more layoffs" line in November was bad. I understand that circumstances change, but other than SVB (which was contained and didn't really impact Meta), there wasn't much between November and March. This shows a lack of foresight beyond around a month, not to mention how haphazard the layoffs were.
NYT reported that execs are phoning it in. I have no first-hand knowledge of it, but I believe it.
Zuck missed TikTok. He wasn't ready for Apple's privacy changes. Rather than paying attention to competitors, he was busy building a failed cryptocurrency and the metaverse. Unless letting TikTok take hold was a big brain plan to get lawmakers to stop looking at Meta.
The rebrand was poorly timed. It was almost exactly at the stock peak before reality started setting in.
Sheryl left.
Then there's the overhiring, but at least everyone else in the industry did it, so that's merely average performance.
I don't like it as an investment, and I'm having a hard timing making the case for it being somewhere I want to work.
I guess it's good to hear that Meta is still around.
We’re on the edge of an AI boom, and our tech giants are cutting rather than investing. This seems like a bad strategy.
Meta made the dumb decision to invest in VR, rather than AI. Those giant and expensive VR teams (Or the devs who made horizon worlds...) aren't going to easily transition into AI.
AI generated content is the real core of metaverses, not VR goggles. Hence Nvidia is actually making the right bet on its 'omniverse' infrastructure.
Nvidia has made no layoffs, and I don't expect any within the next 5 years.
AI generated content is the real core of metaverses, not VR goggles. Hence Nvidia is actually making the right bet on its 'omniverse' infrastructure.
Nvidia has made no layoffs, and I don't expect any within the next 5 years.
In FAIRness, their investments in AI research have been significant in absolute terms. What may be lacking is the connection between research and actual products, but I think that's true everywhere. Though I agree VR has been a distraction, I think it's misleading to say the investment was in VR "rather than AI"; it's been in addition to.
I don’t think it was a completely dumb or unreasonable decision in the abstract, but how they’ve handled it has been very foolish. Facebook has very, very, very little to show for its VR efforts: Destruction of any brand value Occulus had, continued upgrades of their headset product lines (certainly not nothing, but regular spec bumps aren’t going to set the world on fire), and a VR chat app far inferior to VR Chat or even something like Second Life. It’s like Facebook’s VR strategy has just been to keep a large VR team in a holding pattern for years waiting for Apple to release a headset and legitimize AR/VR in the minds of the public at large.
Meta had their own successes in AI research. And I wouldn't be so sure the goggles are going to stay irrelevant.
Facebook also invested in AI.
They are running giant A100 clusters and employ dozens of ML researchers
They are running giant A100 clusters and employ dozens of ML researchers
VR googles absolutely are core for Meta as they want to own the next (physical) platform.
They’ve learned the hard way the cost of not owning the hardware layer.
They’ve learned the hard way the cost of not owning the hardware layer.
Ironic that their VR goggles run Android
And Android runs on Linux. It's the platform that is important.
I'm reminded about the quote from The Incredibles: "When everyone's super... no one will be."
When smaller AI startups start, say, showing more relevant search results than Google does, and more personally relevant posts than Meta - and IMO this is highly likely, since FAANG have much more brand reputation to protect than those startups and will necessarily move cautiously - perceptions will start to rise that they are no longer the superpowers. But their valuation multiples are based on them being the only superpowers in their respective spaces. So if they want to preserve shareholder value, and they can't depend on hype, they'll have to cut aggressively so they can at least show strong earnings per share.
When smaller AI startups start, say, showing more relevant search results than Google does, and more personally relevant posts than Meta - and IMO this is highly likely, since FAANG have much more brand reputation to protect than those startups and will necessarily move cautiously - perceptions will start to rise that they are no longer the superpowers. But their valuation multiples are based on them being the only superpowers in their respective spaces. So if they want to preserve shareholder value, and they can't depend on hype, they'll have to cut aggressively so they can at least show strong earnings per share.
I'm ignorantly confident that no one in AI-related divisions/projects are being cut at Meta.
I mean this is the time for companies with great strategy to hire laid off folks. And VCs with great strategy can fund them if companies are startup and lack resources.
They're doing both.
For the love of God, how many times have they done this at this point?
Every single round of layoffs generates several stories:
1. Announcement
2. Identifying who is affected
3. Start of the actual action
4. Morale is affect this or that way
So we hear each action in painful detail. Not as painful detail as the folks getting laid off of course. But each story hits the front page.
1. Announcement
2. Identifying who is affected
3. Start of the actual action
4. Morale is affect this or that way
So we hear each action in painful detail. Not as painful detail as the folks getting laid off of course. But each story hits the front page.
Facebook/Meta has done exactly one mass layoff in its history (in November 2022), and this is the second.
Three.
This article is still about the 2nd layoff, just confirming the concrete time looks like where as previously just known to be sometime around end of april / early may
Ah, yes, you’re right. I didn’t realize they announced a two step layoff in March. So, two, I guess.
It's a 3-step layoff actually. March, April, and May.
but how much did they hire in the last 2-3 years?
annadane(1)
I don't know what anyone else in the non-MPK/-FRE buildings here is doing, but 95% chance it's not engineering. Mostly, it seems like most workers in the building chit-chat and have meetings rather than do anything resembling actual work that's building product going in front of users. Country-club, cult-of-toxic-positivity lots of relaxing going on, in my view.
In my view, you're either a hustler, a hacker, or a manager of such to be essential to a tech business. You don't need any strategic hiring coordinating coordinators for higher-education. Also, the spend on R&D needs to be more focused on productization. Finally, I'm still wondering why there's no consultantish enterprise sales arm monetizing and discovering opportunities for lucrative SaaS products like Workplace.