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

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

#371

Post by blakesley » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:37 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…

100%! My company ineptly stumbled into a scenario like this, so to speak, and the result was as you described. After witnessing how that played out, I would expect a similar outcome in other scenarios.

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

#372

Post by joshstrange » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #362

joshstrange wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you know, there are economic times where it's tough to find a job in certain industries, no matter how awesome you are.

Just so I'm clear, your response to "good workers don't put up with that shit" is essentially "they will if they can't find a different/better job"? Cause that just sounds exploitative and scummy. I'm sure companies make those calculations but it doesn't make it right/moral.

In a vacuum I can understand and empathise with your comment but as part of this chain (where you say "the good people are the ones that perform well in the kitchen when it gets hot.") I can't take it seriously. Which is it? Do the good people perform well (and enjoy) when it gets hot or are they held hostage by the economic times?

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

#373

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:39 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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31950015 - it stands on its own and I'm trying to make the thread less top heavy.

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

#374

Post by tuckerman » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

TomVDB wrote: post #337

tuckerman wrote: post #307

I think we do a disservice to ourselves and the open culture at many SV companies to give leakers so much attention. Without context (which when speaking to a company can also include context you can only get by working there and experiencing the culture/norms) it’s possible to pull out clips from most speeches/announcements to excite anger from just about anyone and many media outlets seem very happy to help leakers…

Why a disservice? It’s the contrary. Thanks to those kinds of leaks, I had already decided I’d never want to work for that place. When a good friend started working there, he confirmed pretty much everything.

It’s fun and juicy to read leaks from other companies but it really sucks when your leadership stops being open or stops taking questions in all hands meetings because everything they say immediately gets posted on Twitter.

Just because you’d like to know the information about the on-goings of a company doesn’t make you entitled to it and I wish large companies would collectively do more to go after leakers in court to stop this trend.

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

#375

Post by abeppu » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #156

WJW wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here Would be interesting to see whether he still considers himself essential for the future of Meta.

How many founders of successful companies willingly stepped out? 1%? 0.01%? :-)

How would you know? When a founder is out unwillingly, most of the time don't both sides pretend it was willing and amicable because they know it looks bad?

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

#376

Post by gitfan86 » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:41 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…

Similarly, I was at a startup and revenue growth had stopped. They decided to blame the dev team for not making features fast enough. I don't know what happened between that time and two years later when they shutdown, but I'm sure it was terrible.

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

#377

Post by synu » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #327

synu wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true, but at a company that size when the order comes all the way from the top to “turn up the heat?” Sounds like a recipe for misery generation.

Where should the order come from? I'm agnostic about whether or not Facebook will implement this well. Certainly it's possible to implement these kinds of initiatives badly. But the whole HN attitude of "how dare you?!?" doesn't strike me as people who are taking an appropriately realistic view of the real problems in trying to make a large organization be high performing, it strikes me as entitlement. I also feel li…

I think that building a high performance organisation starts way before you get to the point where you need an emergency leadership directive at the beginning of a downturn that from now on you’re going to turn up the heat and hold people accountable for performance. If you are pulling that lever to some extent I think you have to admit you took a wrong turn somewhere.

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

#378

Post by 28304283409234 » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:46 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…

This is just a factory owner telling the workers the expected output increased by 20%. Nothing more. This thinking belongs in 1872.

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

#379

Post by akhmatova » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

elpescado wrote: post #113

FullyFunctional wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just compare CRUD to literal rocket science?

But launching rockets isn't rocket science. You build giant steel tube, fill it with some explosives and liquid oxygen, ignite it and, kaboom! you go to space. That's the theory behind it. Now, to put that into actual practice is whole different thing. The same with CRUD. CRUD is simple, but to do CRUD on ~Facebook~ Meta scale, that's a different thing.

Meta-scale CRUD is fancy, to be sure. But the craft behind it is still not on the same level as building things that can, you know, blow up on the lauchpad. Or break apart up at 46,000 with you a schoolteacher and other crew members inside. While the nation watches. Stuff like that.

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

#380

Post by kennywinker » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

tuckerman wrote: post #368

kennywinker wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can word dance around it all you want - his intent is clear: working at meta is going to be harder tomorrow than it was yesterday, with the intent that some people will quit over it. How you feel about that depends on if you see yourself as more similar to an owner of meta, or as a worker at meta.

I’ve seen the pain low performers cause others around them as an IC and having the company try and fix that problem seems very reasonable. But who knows, for all we know this could just be rhetoric to inspire some initiative. Assuming people that don’t support your strong gut reaction to this leak view themselves as “an owner of meta” is strange—my views here are very much colored by my experience as an IC at a simil…

Why do you care, as a worker, about leakers and low performers? I understand being frustrated if people you work with are obstructionist, poor communicators, or have bad attitudes - but in my experience most of those people would be classified by the company as HIGH performers. The “low performers” are, in my experience, the most fun to work with.