Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 509 posts

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#31

Post by malermeister »

boredtofears wrote: post #27
d--b wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”? Yes FB is not for me. Not as a worker, not as a customer.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

I quit Facebook because I was getting pings by Zuckerberg himself on button padding on one of his pet projects.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#32

Post by inferiorhuman »

boredtofears wrote: post #28
lordnacho wrote: post #22

Maybe I'm being totally naive, but what I want from FB is not better discoverability and metaverse, I want my friends to put their lives on it like they used to a few years ago. I don't even put anything on it myself anymore because of the smell around the company, and very few people I know do either, so my feed now looks like a bunch of memes and random news, with adverts in between. Engagement with a real human pu…

> I want my friends to put their lives on it like they used to a few years ago Really, you _want_ to go back to that? They don't have to regain your trust in any way? I don't think the "innocent" days were all that innocent, many were just naïve.

> They don't have to regain your trust in any way?

I think you misread the comment you replied to.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#33

Post by cokeandpepsi »

intodameta wrote: post #30

This is going to get super ugly over there. Sheryl Sandberg leaving was a part of this, the entire “oh, we have this pending investigation into you…no big deal” is the corporate equivalent of the claws coming out just a little bit to tell you that if you don’t quit, the claws will come out all the way. She was expensive and probably not fully engaged and bought in with this random direction change into Metaverse, a b…

The 'metaverse' play just feels weird to me, kudos to them if it works out though

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#34

Post by eru »

d--b wrote: post #25
achow wrote: post #2

Interesting quote from CEO in an all hands directly to employees. I don't want to be at Meta right now.. .."turning up the heat" on performance management to weed out staffers unable to meet more aggressive goals. "Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here," Zuckerberg said. "Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turni…

Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”? Yes FB is not for me. Not as a worker, not as a customer.

> Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”?

Not to me. Just reads like they want to ditch low performers.

(They might or might not still want to ditch 'ethical people', no clue. It just doesn't read that way here.)

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#35

Post by wiz21c »

padolsey wrote: post #17
coolandsmartrr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSC culture?

Performance Summary Cycle. From experience, the psc culture within fb/meta is intense, internally competitive (even within teams) and heavily focuses on quantifiable gains (e.g. often tech-debt or ethical-minded features are forgone for engagement metric increases ... via any means). It's not nice unless you're a very specific type of person.

If Zuckerberg finds it OK to talk like that to its employees, then it means the general culture there must be able to hear him. So you're right, very specific type of person. But I wonder : how would you describe that type ? the type "if I'm in Meta it's because I'm the best of the best and I want to continue to prove I'm the best of the best, at any cost" ?

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#36

Post by abdabab »

malermeister wrote: post #31
boredtofears wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

I quit Facebook because I was getting pings by Zuckerberg himself on button padding on one of his pet projects.

Shouldn’t that take only a few minutes?

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#37

Post by jsemrau »

GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #21
jsemrau wrote: post #16

That's how you keep your company alive. Social is about to change quite heavily. FB as a product is now 15+ years old. This will be a really interesting space to watch.

I cant imagine they’ll have an easy hiring funnel after this. This begins the slow decline

This is still a FAANG company with loads of people from the big schools. If the previous scandals (Cambridge Analytics, etc) haven't slowed down their hiring, this won't affect them as well.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#38

Post by doktorhladnjak »

hinkley wrote: post #8
gedy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Meta-hater, but the tone of this is always destructive when it comes up. It's basically soft layoffs that try and paint those leaving/pushed out as "unmotivated" or "can't keep up with the rest of us". I wish companies would be more honest that they aren't doing well, over hired, etc instead. I kinda get mgmt types thinking this will keep remaining feeling motivated, safe, etc. but it's very phoney to a lot…

I've heard it asserted that your median level of talent doesn't change much with these strategies. But that means you're losing people that you could probably ill afford to lose.

I’ve worked at a couple places that took this layoff philosophy. Twelve months later headcount was back to the same level. More of the best employees left on their own volition after layoffs. Company spent a bunch in severance and damaged reputation for no real gain. Shareholders I guess felt they got their pound of flesh.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#39

Post by saos »

> "Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here," Zuckerberg said.

> "Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me," he said.

He is planning to make cuts with those comments. Clearly.

I assumed Facebook was making profit given its advertising powers. Wonder how that’s taken a hit over the months

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#40

Post by anm89 »

waynesonfire wrote: post #19
anm89 wrote: post #11

Damn it's enjoyable to watch them crash and burn.

just like your 401k?

My only positions have been short the market(psq) cash and gold since November of last year.

Which is part of the reason that this is extremely enjoyable for me.

Post reply on HN