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Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

reuters.com

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

#231

Post by mcculley »

s17n wrote: post #204
Planktonne wrote: post #202

> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here If a company has both 1) A lot of dead wood 2) No better strategy to deal with it than 'turning up the heat' Then this suggests a profound failure of management and leadership. I'd start cutting the dead wood there.

Every sufficiently large company has a lot of dead wood, and nobody has yet devised a better strategy than 'turning up the heat'.

Organizations that need good people will try to improve the ones they have. While some organizations have dead wood that cannot be improved and must be replaced, great organizations play the long game and try to develop people.

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

#232

Post by mlyle »

refurb wrote: post #209
Planktonne wrote: post #202

> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here If a company has both 1) A lot of dead wood 2) No better strategy to deal with it than 'turning up the heat' Then this suggests a profound failure of management and leadership. I'd start cutting the dead wood there.

I’m not sure I’d blame management for not having a crystal ball and seeing the market downturn in advance. I can see them getting fired for not hitting their hiring and spending targets when the company has aggressive expansion goals. And the idea you can hire thousands of people and exclude all potential deadwood is just fantasy.

But you could, you know, actually measure performance and manage according to it.

I'm not saying self-selection shouldn't be a part of it. Some employees should absolutely be thinking, "eh, I might be managed-out eventually for underperformance because I am not a great fit here... and I don't know that I can fix it or that it's worth fixing it" and depart on their own.

But it should absolutely be because management quality is good and everyone understands the process and what's going on. Not because the workplace has been made artificially unpleasant to see who quits: that makes the wrong people leave.

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

#233

Post by tgv »

darthrupert wrote: post #216

What on earth can make a person as successful as Zuckerberg be so fucking clueless? Obviously the first people to leave when heat turns up are the best ones, as they are the ones who have the most opportunities and courage. I have seen this a dozen times and this happens almost mechanically. I knew success was mostly about luck, but things like this make it seem like it’s 100% about luck.

Much of it is. Luck, and sales skills.

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

#235

Post by hluska »

kennywinker wrote: post #217
s17n wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every sufficiently large company has a lot of dead wood, and nobody has yet devised a better strategy than 'turning up the heat'.

Citation needed. alternative strategies would include: Rewarding good employees and firing bad ones. Deciding on actual useful performance metrics ahead of time and measuring people against them.

If I had one wish, it would be that we would all give up that rude “citation needed” trope. I agree with you, yet that’s such a childish way to argue that it hurts the point. Just have the confidence to say you don’t agree!

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

#236

Post by IncRnd »

mcv wrote: post #212
s17n wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every sufficiently large company has a lot of dead wood, and nobody has yet devised a better strategy than 'turning up the heat'.

Is it an effective strategy at all? I can imagine that turning up the heat without any benefits is just as likely to chase the most talented people away.

The stock value has dropped by over half and meta is preparing for a recession. Ad sales and user growth have already slowed.

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

#237

Post by blantonl »

Planktonne wrote: post #202

> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here If a company has both 1) A lot of dead wood 2) No better strategy to deal with it than 'turning up the heat' Then this suggests a profound failure of management and leadership. I'd start cutting the dead wood there.

I would suggest that you interpreted Mark's statement that "there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here" without considering it in the context of the other statement: he warned that a recent slump in the markets “might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history

He and his team is doing exactly what public company management is supposed to do during challenging times, provide better shareholder value.

The only real other strategy in cases like we're seeing is to just pull an IBM and fire 45,000 people in one week.

Which strategy would you prefer?

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

#238

Post by hef19898 »

jonny_eh wrote: post #208

> some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me Of course he's ok with it, no need to pay severance to employees that "voluntarily" quit.

And for management performance, just rank those leaving in other categories than "unwanted attrition" and everything is good.

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

#239

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Planktonne wrote: post #202

> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here If a company has both 1) A lot of dead wood 2) No better strategy to deal with it than 'turning up the heat' Then this suggests a profound failure of management and leadership. I'd start cutting the dead wood there.

If a company is collecting a lot of "dead wood" underperformers, the correct response is to start raising performance expectations and hold people accountable to those standards.

That's essentially what Meta is saying they're going to do. The "...so employees will quit" was an editorialized addition to the headline. The real story is that they're tightening their employee expectations and holding people accountable, which IMO is a totally reasonable thing to do. HN comments are always full of people claiming that FAANG employees are nothing special, so I'm a bit surprised to see the negative reaction to a FAANG company going on record to say that they're raising expectations for their employees.

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