Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by PragmaticPulp » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #214

Yeah, "we hired people we shouldn't have so now we're going to make it increasingly unpleasant to work here" doesn't work. First-hand, what I've seen happen is that your most talented people, who are the most in demand, leave the organization quite quickly because they correctly realize they don't have to put up with this bullshit. It's the coasters who fear they'll never land an equally cushy job who attempt to ride…

> Yeah, "we hired people we shouldn't have so now we're going to make it increasingly unpleasant to work here" doesn't work.

But that's not what Meta is saying. The goal isn't just to make it miserable. The goal is to raise the expectations and hold people accountable throughout the company.

The exact quote "Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here" is hard to argue with. Every company that went on a hiring spree during the last bull run has collected some percentage of people who aren't performing or aren't qualified. Raising expectations and holding people accountable is a reasonable approach, IMO. Much better than just firing people.

Give people a chance to meet very clear expectations and fair warning when they're not. Remove people who can't or won't catch up.

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

#252

Post by avgcorrection » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

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.

> Then this suggests a profound failure of management and leadership.

Dead wood management?

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

#253

Post by downrightmike » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

vmoore wrote: post #215

So I was wondering, does this mean Meta will have to hire people who are 10x more productive and Get Things Done at a faster, more reliable pace? If there are people like that who yield better results consistently, how do they manage burnout? Are they treated as the mythical 'rock-star engineer' who other companies like to poach and clamor for? 10x output is so rare in this industry, and having 10 employees that matc…

They are probably already trying to get two 10xers to breed a 100x.

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

#254

Post by mberning » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #214

Yeah, "we hired people we shouldn't have so now we're going to make it increasingly unpleasant to work here" doesn't work. First-hand, what I've seen happen is that your most talented people, who are the most in demand, leave the organization quite quickly because they correctly realize they don't have to put up with this bullshit. It's the coasters who fear they'll never land an equally cushy job who attempt to ride…

Absolutely. I worked at GE for 5 years and their reluctance to performance manage individual contributors was just insane. They will do anything to cut people in ways that are not performance related. VJRP. SERO. Contractor reductions. Site eliminations. And then finally the blanket RIF. I never saw anybody get fired for poor performance, and many of them should have been. And they also make it hell on people leaders to put people on PIPs. If you take over a team and 50% of them are slackers you can not put all of them on PIPs. HR will start looking at you as a people leader. “Why can’t you motivate and inspire these people?” It was insane really. I actually loved working there, but the bureaucratic BS was crazy.

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

#255

Post by DisjointedHunt » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #225

msbarnett wrote: post #214

Yeah, "we hired people we shouldn't have so now we're going to make it increasingly unpleasant to work here" doesn't work. First-hand, what I've seen happen is that your most talented people, who are the most in demand, leave the organization quite quickly because they correctly realize they don't have to put up with this bullshit. It's the coasters who fear they'll never land an equally cushy job who attempt to ride…

It's absolute insanity that they don't see that the best talent can and will walk out the door if this happens. Even if the top performers are insulated from the "heat" there are a non-zero number of them that this won't sit right with and/or they are affected and they leave. Any company who uses this kind of shadow-layoff or whatever you want to call it is scum, plain and simple. I mean that's no surprise for Meta o…

AWS is another. The gripe i have with them is they do it during the good times as well. I've seen some pretty horrible effects on perfectly good devs who were subject to what i'm only going to characterize as mental torture during their time there.

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

#256

Post by PragmaticPulp » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #225

msbarnett wrote: post #214

Yeah, "we hired people we shouldn't have so now we're going to make it increasingly unpleasant to work here" doesn't work. First-hand, what I've seen happen is that your most talented people, who are the most in demand, leave the organization quite quickly because they correctly realize they don't have to put up with this bullshit. It's the coasters who fear they'll never land an equally cushy job who attempt to ride…

It's absolute insanity that they don't see that the best talent can and will walk out the door if this happens. Even if the top performers are insulated from the "heat" there are a non-zero number of them that this won't sit right with and/or they are affected and they leave. Any company who uses this kind of shadow-layoff or whatever you want to call it is scum, plain and simple. I mean that's no surprise for Meta o…

> It's absolute insanity that they don't see that the best talent can and will walk out the door if this happens.

On the contrary, the best talent is probably already performing to these higher expectations and won't be impacted. Their peers who weren't keeping up are the ones who will be impacted.

Holding employees accountable for high performance standards is generally welcomed by high performers.

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

#257

Post by tootie » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

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.

It's definitely indicative of immature leadership. Meta invested absolutely willy nilly in unprofitable moonshots and they're not the only ones. They could have held some cash, or paid down debt (fiscal, technical, organizational) and left themselves with cushion but they didn't. It seems like the other web 1.0 companies (Google, Apple, Amazon) are all weathering this downturn pretty comfortably.

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

#258

Post by joshstrange » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

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.

Money and luck. Zuck may be portrayed as a "drop out college kid" but he went to Harvard and they guy knew going in that he had the safety net of his dad (and his offer to have/run a McDonalds franchise) to fall back on. I think some people greatly underestimate the power of a strong safety net and what that can do to your confidence, even more so if you've grown up knowing it was rock solid and you could take big risks without really putting yourself in much danger.

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

#259

Post by akhmatova » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

FullyFunctional wrote: post #108

elpescado wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> glorified CRUD message board That's like describing SpaceX as "glorified fireworks"

Did you just compare CRUD to literal rocket science?

Yup, they did (despite the perorations in the sibling comment). Precious.

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

#260

Post by joshstrange » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #248

synu wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work well? Aren’t the good people the first to leave if you decide to make everyone miserable?

the good people are the ones that perform well in the kitchen when it gets hot.

Lol. Bullshit.

The good ones know to get out when a company treats it's employees like shit. Just because they aren't the target today doesn't mean they won't be the target tomorrow. The idea that people should wear bad working conditions as a badge of honor is just silly and something I'd expect people (the good ones) to grow out of after a few years max in the industry.