Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 509 posts

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

#441

Post by mercutio2 »

andsoitis wrote: post #403
tsimionescu wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a horrible idea. Truly great engineering requires long-term commitment. Great engineering organizations often have people leave by retiring, not being fired.

Tenure at Netflix tends to be longer than at other tech companies. https://developerpitstop.com/how-long-do-software-engineers-...

The numbers on that graph for the companies I'm familiar with are wildly, wildly incorrect.

I have no idea where those numbers come from, but I don't for a second buy the idea that average tenure at Netflix is larger than others on the peninsula.

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

#442

Post by adhesive_wombat »

georgeburdell wrote: post #43
boredtofears wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

Meta has done a lot of interesting work in the hardware space. In hardware, you just kind of accept, regardless of your company or its vision, that your work is ultimately used to facilitate the watching of cat videos.

Also lots of hardware in industrial applications. Though fundamentally you can consider that everything is in indirectly service of cat videos. Even a jet turbine blade casting machine is going to be used to get someone home faster to load up the cats.

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

#443

Post by mberning »

siva7 wrote: post #277
mberning wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s not a bad or unreasonable question, but it is completely ignorant and pollyannish. These are the same HR professionals that let managers submit high or acceptable marks for all employees every year and then wonder why a large number of teams underperform. Inside large orgs you will regularly encounter people that have insanely high titles and their only appreciable skill is being able to survive inside the bureaucracy like a cockroach after successive nuclear blasts. You will encounter senior and staff enterprise software engineers that have never written a line of code and have zero commits ever.

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

#444

Post by Spivak »

dangus wrote: post #426
kornhole wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep asking people if they know anybody excited about the metaverse. I have not found any even among people who are total Facebook products.

It’s because the Metaverse is just Facebook’s last ditch effort at controlling an App Store. Never mind the fact that VR is niche and will always be niche, or that VR conference calls add zero value beyond a simple Zoom call, Meta is going for it anyway because they have no other viable options. I have to admit that the technology itself looks really cool, but it’s a solution looking for a problem.

You aren’t thinking broad enough. The metaverse is Facebook’s oh fuck moment that a massive social network crept up on them without them realizing it. My friends and I “hang out” more in games and discord than any other digital space by a massive margin. Getting together in a Minecraft server might as well be a physical hangout and it’s taking the place of a lot of our group texts. Playing games for me is more about the social activity than the actual game.

It’s not really about VR, it’s just that FB had no chance whatsoever of competing with existing players in the PC, console, or mobile market so they are pushing VR as a “staple” gaming product. They’re trying to make a new market where they can be a major player.

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

#445

Post by tuckerman »

juve1996 wrote: post #437
tuckerman wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very specific meaning of whistleblowing and giving every leaker that title does a disservice to those that are actual whistleblowers.

I don't see how this doesn't fit the meaning - providing info of something that can severely damage many people's livelihoods.

Running to a news outlet to tell them that some company is going to allegedly raise some performance bar is very, very different than, for example, reporting illegal activities about private companies to federal agencies. The former is someone looking for some thrill or 20 seconds of fame and, afaik in the US at least, there is nothing like whistleblower protections for that behavior.

I also disagree that anything in what was leaked of Mark’s statement is severely damaging to livelihoods any more so than any other time someone has gotten let go for performance reasons.

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

#446

Post by kwatsonafter »

I'm calling it: Facebook is now what MySpace was when Facebook became Facebook. I think if we can take away anything it's that the future of, "computers communicating" isn't, "inviting normies to the conversation as to turn everything into a bathroom wall."

I'm looking at you Hacker News.

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

#447

Post by juve1996 »

tuckerman wrote: post #445
juve1996 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this doesn't fit the meaning - providing info of something that can severely damage many people's livelihoods.

Running to a news outlet to tell them that some company is going to allegedly raise some performance bar is very, very different than, for example, reporting illegal activities about private companies to federal agencies. The former is someone looking for some thrill or 20 seconds of fame and, afaik in the US at least, there is nothing like whistleblower protections for that behavior. I also disagree that anything in…

So you say it's not a big enough deal to be whistleblowing. But then you want the courts to punish people for leaking this information.

Which is it? Your position is logically inconsistent.

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

#448

Post by perfecthjrjth »

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

Remember a Chinese SWE, who jumped off the fourth floor of a fb building: https://pandaily.com/a-chinese-facebook-engineer-commits-sui...

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

#449

Post by bogomipz »

From the article:

>"If I had to bet, I'd say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we've seen in recent history," Zuckerberg told workers in a weekly employee Q&A session, audio of which was heard by Reuters."

This is fascinating. I have seen interviews with everyone from Larry Summers to Janet Yellen, Jamie Dimon and countless other prodigious economic minds recently and the only thing that any of them state with any certainty is that a recession "might" happen. None of them have made any pronouncements as to the severity of the downturn should it happen. Yet here Zuck is, not only sharing the degree of certainty but also the degree of severity.

Zuckerberg really comes off as desperate sounding. I can't imagine this speech instilling any inspiration, confidence or good will in employees. Certainly not anyone who may have been on the fence about the whole "let's be the company on the Metaverse" garbage. I hope people do "self-select" and leave in droves.

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

#450

Post by cyanydeez »

npteljes wrote: post #107
achow wrote: post #2

Interesting quote from CEO in an all hands directly to employees. I don't want to be at Meta right now.. .."turning up the heat" on performance management to weed out staffers unable to meet more aggressive goals. "Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here," Zuckerberg said. "Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turni…

>"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.

Not knowing who is worth firing seems like mismanagement to me alongside the obvious " do more work plebs and you'll be safe"
Post reply on HN