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

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

#271

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

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #256

joshstrange wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol, anyone who's really a high performer knows that being metriced is terrible. Having to constantly be cranking out LoC because some middle manager doesn't actually understand the process of actually making software is infuriating. And even if they are doing well now, no one wants to feel that dark gnawing instability that comes from knowing the people on your team you grow to know and trust are constantly on the chopping block.

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

#272

Post by lnxg33k1 » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

I am not sure why I should quit myself and just not ideologically start to do nothing to add value to the company while getting paid and just wait to be laid off with severance when the time comes, like I have no interest of self-sacrificing for facebook and at this point I also have no interest in adding value to this shithole

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

#273

Post by robonerd » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 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.

3) They see fit to announce point 2 plainly, instead of simply doing it without saying that's what they're doing.

I guess announcing it is part of the "turn up the heat" process?

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

#274

Post by pfortuny » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 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.

Never underestimate the power of a bored bureaucrat under pressure to keep his job.

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

#275

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

blantonl wrote: post #237

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,…

>Which strategy would you prefer?

They actually teach this in business school. Laying off bunches of people triggers regulatory compliance which can limit hiring and other stuff. Announcing layoffs without actually doing them causes the best to leave, the expert strap-hangers to entrench, and the people in the middle to become less focused.

The accepted strategy is to cut as deeply as you need to cut to get through the downturn, then get back to business. Do it fast, do it deep, do it once.

Zuck chose to turn the workplace into a low-stakes Hunger Games.

No one needs another reason to dislike Facebook, but Zuck gave us another one.

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

#276

Post by aetherson » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:09 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?

It turns out that "increase expectations of delivery" is not synonymous with "make everyone miserable."

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

#277

Post by siva7 » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

mberning wrote: post #254

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…

Well, why can’t you motivate and inspire these people? Nothing insane about this question

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

#278

Post by joshstrange » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #256

joshstrange wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess it really comes down to what specifically "turning up the heat" means. It sounds like a hell of KPIs and other stupid metrics that waste everyone's time so that a manager can boil a person down to a number instead of doing their job and making hard calls.

I've been a high (if not the highest) performer at companies I've worked at (albeit much smaller companies Meta), if they suddenly want me to log my hours, do a bunch of metric-related BS, or grade me on KPIs that have no basis in reality then I'm leaving.

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

#279

Post by bricemo » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

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.

This is exactly what they are doing with one improvement: instead of firing, they are allowing attrition to happen naturally. That’s better than layoffs

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

#280

Post by nkrisc » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #210

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'.

Does this not have the side effect of also driving away employees with the best alternatives (so, probably your best ones)?

The worst performers know they can't get an equivalent job somewhere else, so they're going to cling on no matter how miserable you make it. They have no choice. Your best performers know they have their pick of any job they like so it anything gets worse for them they'll just go somewhere else.