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

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

#261

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

synu wrote: post #224

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'.

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

Yes, good people that know they can find something else will leave first. Those who stay are mostly very comfortable and well positioned that they know they far in the queue of layoff or those that know they cannot find something similarly well paid.

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

#262

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

plantwallshoe wrote: post #250

I worked at Meta for 2 years and the pressure to land features while keeping up on your code review/LoC metrics was a fucking nightmare during the boom times. I can only imagine how shitty it will get with the specter of layoffs floating around

Assuming LoC = lines of code... seriously? That's by far the dumbest metric for measuring software engineer productivity that exists.

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

#263

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

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #239

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,…

No post body was provided.

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

#264

Post by DoneWithAllThat » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

cs137 wrote: post #125

npteljes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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. This, to me, sounds like he's pressuring people to leave, so that they don't have to fire them, which would involve severance.

Generally, people who get PIP'd don't get severance, even if fired. The real purpose of the PIP process is to grind people down so they make mistakes, costing them what could otherwise be beautiful lawsuits [1], or just stop showing up (which I guess would fall under quitting, since they end up firing themselves, at least bureaucratically speaking). ---- [1] This is surprisingly easy to do in the US. If you post abou…

I have never, at any company, found this to be true.

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

#265

Post by kleinsch » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:08 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…

Meta used to be able to hire those people, but with their reputation issues and other companies joining them in tier 1 pay, they have trouble getting them now. What they're dealing with is, Meta used to be a very results-based environment where people worked really hard to try to hit perf goals. 10x engs would get huge bonuses.

In the last 6-8 years, it's gotten so big and bureaucratic that for many people, driving your individual metric to move is a coinflip that's out of your control. They've hired tons and tons of people in that time, so there's a good chunk of people who work a straight 40, collect their meets-all review, and live their life. I would guess Zuck wants to try to get back to where people were more motivated, but with the stock price not going through the roof and the company closing in on 100K employees, I don't see how employees are going to feel that sense of ownership or control.

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

#266

Post by dboreham » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

plantwallshoe wrote: post #250

I worked at Meta for 2 years and the pressure to land features while keeping up on your code review/LoC metrics was a fucking nightmare during the boom times. I can only imagine how shitty it will get with the specter of layoffs floating around

> LoC metrics

See: Goodhart's Law

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

#267

Post by blantonl » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 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…

And I've seen first-hand where the most talented people aren't having the heat turned up on them, they know they are good, they still get it good, and they will continue to do so.

Even the most talented people can be locked into positions with compensation packages that will severely handcuff them to staying put. And if we really are in one of the most severe downturns we've ever seen, those talented people will very quickly realize they have it really good

There are zillions of HR strategies for retaining the baller employees, while trimming the ones that aren't baller when things get lean. To many who have managed teams of people, products, etc, they look like standard HR stuff, to others, they look inhuman terrible practices. Sorry.

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

#268

Post by aeturnum » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 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 also...if they have the ability to recognize and protect their high performers - why "turn up the heat" in general? You've already identified who isn't performing.

Conversely, if you can't avoid harassing your highest performers - those seem like the people who will leave first, while the people who are under-performing will dig in to avoid risking the job market.

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

#269

Post by kennywinker » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

hluska wrote: post #235

kennywinker wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

What I mean by that is more than “i don’t agree” - it’s “hey, it looks like you asserted an opinion as fact”.

I’m pretty sure all ways of saying that come off rude. Sometimes rudeness is irreducible, and I think this is one of those times. I like “citation needed” because to me it seems like a playful version of rude rather than a serious version of rude. Shrugging emoji

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

#270

Post by Jasper_ » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #251

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 wit…

the people that shouldn't be there are the ones that approved the hiring spree