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Meta and Google are cutting staff

wsj.com

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Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#101

Post by convolvatron »

ejb999 wrote: post #91
rosywoozlechan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrival of Covid was a period of great stress and change in people's lives. Maybe they were dealing with some things and not really coasting? Just maybe needed some more support? This way of thinking about people, coworkers, without understanding the situation in their lives and what they've been talking to with their managers about, is just alien to me and I don't understand it. I don't think it's a good way to…

IMO, it is not awful to state the obvious. Every company - especially every company over a certain size, knows there are a certain percentage of people that just 'phone it in' and aren't pulling their weight relative to others - pretending that isn't true, really doesn't help anyone. More importantly, it is demoralizing to the people you want to keep - to make it seem to them that putting in the extra effort doesn't…

if its 10% phoners, this isn't a problem. because there is a natural turnover with everyone else, and the phoners tend to stick they generally represent an increasing faction over time.

as they start to dominate the organization, they actually cast shade on people that are trying to get something done. nothing is getting done so the giant company starts sucking in as many people as possible to try to replace the outflow and to try to start getting something done.

does anyone know of a company that survived this process?

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#102

Post by acchow »

battery_glasses wrote: post #58
o10449366 wrote: post #29

The article highlights that the easiest way for these companies to let go of staff right now is to dissolve entire teams. I've heard from friends that work at these companies that recent hiring freezes have actually made managers more hesitant to fire low performers because anyone they fire can't be replaced and they'd rather have a low performer than no one at all. The team dissolving process seems to sidestep this…

At Meta managers can't really get away with hiding low performers. Your performance review isn't finalized by your manager, but rather the manager submits your review to a calibrating board that tries to ensure fairness and maintain quality standards. They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking but you are absolutely graded on the curve of the other engineers in your department and level.

> They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking

Graded in the context of peers’ performance does not imply that they sort employees by performance.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#103

Post by marktangotango »

jzb wrote: post #50
jejeyyy77 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, being laid off sounds pretty good right about now. Paid vacation before going back into a hot job market for a full remote job.

The job market seems to have cooled substantially from where I'm looking. I have friends at a lot of different major tech companies and hiring has slowed or stopped in all cases. Earlier this year it was full steam ahead hiring, now it's harder to get reqs, reqs are being pulled, etc. Now, if you have really in-demand skills / experience that may not matter much. But companies are slamming on the breaks. If I was lai…

I think the parent was posting ironically or forgot to add the \s? Otherwise, yeah, folks need to hang on to those '21/'22 salaries if they can. We may not see those again for some time.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#104

Post by xpe »

paulbjensen wrote: post #81

Public companies trying to keep investors happy and share prices good during a downturn. Let them treat employees like cannon fodder. Some of those employees might end up creating something new and innovative, rather than building another product that gets eventually dead-pooled by Google, or copy-pasted by Meta.

If you had to identify the top three things (in terms of impact) that could be changed (albeit with difficulty) to reduce the chances of employees being stuffed into cannons, what would they be?

My three would be:

1. Relatively weak labor protections in the USA.

2. The fiduciary requirement to maximize shareholder value. Why not allow a company to define its own metric, such as a blend of profit along with employee treatment (or others, within some notion of reasonableness*), make this metric public, provide some sort of accounting and accountability for it, and let shareholders adjust accordingly.

3. The quarterly reporting of public companies. This makes long-term planning and investment much harder.

* I haven't studied this very broadly. I'm familiar with the Triple Bottom Line and B-Corporations.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#105

Post by rjh29 »

pb7 wrote: post #68
assttoasstmgr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

So you agree it's a downgrade in quality of life? Not sure what the point of this comment is other than being rude to people earning more than you.

Adjusting to drinking your own coffee rather than ordering Starbucks via uber 3 times a day is an easier adjustment from going to affording food to not affording it all. Didn't think it needed to be spelled out but there you go.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#106

Post by ProfessorLayton »

nafix wrote: post #39
rosywoozlechan wrote: post #26

Some of these comments mentioned in the article coming from Meta's leadership about there being people who shouldn't probably be there or to get rid of coasters seems so inhumane and demoralizing. What kind of leadership is that? I mean it's understandable that businesses have to cut costs, but have some empathy, and understand how words affect people. Just wow. It's so cynical and depressing.

I like it. I really dislike working with under-performers and people who just refuse to do due diligence on their end. I dislike working with people who always want you to come over to their frame of mind rather than trying to get into yours or meet in the middle. I saw a ton of people coasting during Covid. People need to get negative feedback when they deserve it.

This is under the presumption that most/all of the people being let go are actually low performers, and that leadership is able to correctly identify them.

The same leadership that thought those people met the caliber for working there in the first place.

I won't deny that there's low performers at any organization, but this is giving the people making the cuts too much credit imo. Double-digit cuts say more about leadership than the people being let go.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#107

Post by Apocryphon »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #92
Apocryphon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boom of the past two decades was fueled by low interest rates!

and before that it was the other thing. As I said, I'll believe it when I see it ;)

You're about to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32928803

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#108

Post by mrazomor »

> after the biggest companies hired at breakneck speed through the pandemi

Isn't this the main reason why this "frugality excercise" is being held, and unnecessary stress generated? Sounds like a major VP+ screwup. I hope that layer will answer.

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but this mess seems orchestrated. Or simply CEOs trying to keep the feature parity at the HR level...

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#109

Post by karmasimida »

11101010001100 wrote: post #83
karmasimida wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empathy is anti-capitalist. I think the executive getting rid of their usual fake friendly corporate talk, reflecting the degree how bad their bottom line is hurt.

Loyalty is anti-capitalist.

As software engineers, I don't think this industry value loyalty in the past decade. Job hopping is the norm and is encouraged essentially by the market.

Nothing is wrong doing it, we are following the money as we should.

Just neither empathy or loyalty is relevant to me, not reliable both ways.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#110

Post by whatshisface »

battery_glasses wrote: post #98
znpy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was contacted by meta just less than a month ago, and I declined the offer of an interview… I guess i dodged a bullet?

The pay is near top and the engineers are talented. There are a lot of systems in place to get you to work near max capacity all the time with little slowdown time. There are lots of processes and political upheavals that make it hard to ship code. Some people love it.

That sounds like a place you'd go if you were using work to distract you from a problem in your personal life.
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